The French gay dramatic-thriller Stranger By The Lake has taken critics and audiences by storm since premiering on the festival circuit. Even with its startlingly explicit sex scenes, it has crossed over to mainstream viewers. Actors Pierre Deladonchamps and Christophe Paou, who play the central characters Franck and Michel, spoke to Jack Leger…
For a movie set among cruising gay naturists, this film somehow resonates with everyone.
PIERRE: You’re right, many people know nothing about these places or what men do with other men in cruising areas. But Alain Guiraudie managed to make the characters universal. This is a story about love and friendship and loneliness. And how far you can go for love. So you can easily connect, even if you’re a girl or straight guy. The movie is radical, but the script is so simple, it lets people think for themselves.
How did you identify with your character?
CHRISTOPHE: I always try to be aware about the situation my character’s in, and I was confident working with Alain and Pierre. Michel’s depth – his loneliness and sexuality – are in the script, including scenes where I say, “We’ll have sex and no more. I don’t want to sleep with you.” This is one of the most important points: that we don’t know what will happen in the future and we don’t know the other guy’s past. We are just in the present.
Both of you are naked for most of the film.
PIERRE: It’s not a problem being naked in front of people, so was I ready to put it on-screen forever? But without nudity the movie wouldn’t exist! And it was important to show that being naked and swimming naked is such a pleasure. I think everybody should try it.
CHRISTOPHE: For me being naked was my costume. I was just on stage and had a naked scene, and an audience member told me she didn’t recognise me from the film until I was naked. So I said, “Yeah, that’s because I had the same costume!”
Even with body doubles for the money shots, were the sex scenes difficult?
PIERRE: Simulated sex scenes are awkward because we didn’t know each other at all. But we committed to it and rehearsed a lot. Then on-set the most difficult thing turned out to be the swimming, because it wasn’t summer at all. It was September-October, like 16 degrees. It was freezing!
NAKED, WAITING AND SEARCHING
Writer-director Alain Guiraudie says he decided to make a movie set in a cruising spot because it’s a world he knew, and which he saw as disappearing because it’s now easier to get exactly the man you want using an app. “It’s a world in which you’re naked,” he says, “in that kind of pure state where you’re waiting and you’re also searching. And that’s a way to divide the human race really. Everyone is either waiting or searching for something.”
This yearning theme makes the setting identifiable for much broader audiences, and then a murder changes everything. Although by turning the story dark and deadly, Alain wasn’t making a cautionary statement. “It’s a wider question that I asked,” he says. “I made this film by first asking what happens to society when everybody just thinks of consuming sex or experiencing pleasure for themselves?”
Intriguingly, Franck continues to lust after Michel even after he suspects him of being a killer. “Yes, it was necessary that we should ask ourselves, just as Franck does, how far we are prepared to go for our desire,” Alain says. “That’s the great romantic tradition: how far do you go? There’s transgression and the moral questions are sort of put aside. Well, you find a way of pushing them aside! Imagine Wuthering Heights without that conflict: everyone would have been shouting to kill Heathcliff!”
• Stranger By The Lake is in cinemas now.
