L’inconnu du lac
Director: Alain Guiraudie
Writer: Alain Guiraudie
Cast: Pierre Deladonchamps, Christophe Paou, Patrick d’Assumçao, Jérôme Chappatte
Plot:
Franck (Pierre Deladonchamps) regularly goes to a local lake that doubles as a cruising zone. He has his eyes set on Michel (Christophe Paou) but he appears to have a boyfriend. So Franck starts talking to Henri (Patrick d’Assumçao) who just likes to sit at the lake. Then Franck happens to see how dangerous Michel actually is – but also sees his chance to realize his passion for him.
L’inconnu du lac is beautifully shot and shows the cruising scene without any moral outrage. But other than that it is frustrating and boring.
[SPOILERS]
L’inconnu du lac began intriguingly. The lake was beautiful, the guys were beautiful, Franck’s budding friendship with Henri was interesting and I could totally understand why Franck would wanna get with Michel because hot damn.
But unfortunately I just couldn’t go along with the plot. When Franck sees Michel drowning his boyfriend and doesn’t run to the police, I thought that maybe he had been in shock. When he starts sleeping with Michel, he lost me. When he started crying out for him again at the very end I was already so flabbergasted by his behavior that I couldn’t even care anymore.
And it’s not only Franck who remained incomprehensible to me. How did Henri figure it all out? And I get that he might want to commit suicide by murderer but it seems a little far-fetched that he could predict everything in that way.
Apart from the poor logic on the part of the characters, there was also the fact that the film was just plain boring. After the first half hour or so – in fact starting with the murder – I just couldn’t keep my interest in the film.
Summarizing: it’s fine to skip it.
kalafudra's Stuff 
Pity you couldn’t restrain yourself from giving major spoiler(s) particularly the final moments.
And you are, regarding this movie, very much mistaken. It is a small but boundary-breaking masterpiece, and eventually will come to be seen as such. What your need for ‘plot’ has to do with anything, well, I don’t know or understand; ‘plot’ has nothing to do with the immense power of, say, Derek Jarman’s Blue or Shane Carruth’s Upstream Color. Like those two marvels, L’Inconnu du Lac is a tone poem, a mood piece, a dream play, and it unflinchingly confronts our deepest fears. But then I’ve been around for awhile, with a number of decades on the planet, and I’ve loved and lost and encountered enough men to understand that mainstream notions of ‘character, plot, logic, motivation’ have very little to do – if anything – with the real poetry of need and desire and fear.
And you do everyone a grave disservice by suggesting ‘it’s ok to skip it’.
Since I gave away spoilers, I put a spoiler warning right there. It’s hard to discuss something without mentioning that something.
And my problem wasn’t that there wasn’t a plot, it was with the plot and the character development that was there. Which you would know if you had actually tried to understand what I said instead of adopting a condescending tone and telling me that I’m too young to understand what need or desire or fear are. Which is neither here nor there.
[…] If you liked L’inconnu du lac, you’ll probably like this one as well. I didn’t like […]