- Vittoria Scognamigilio and Jacques Nolot in Porn Theatre
One of the interesting things about Alain Guiraudie’s Stranger by the Lake, opening at the Music Box this Friday, is that it’s not just a movie about gay cruising, but a movie that seems to take its structure from rituals associated with gay cruising. The film proceeds as a sensuous flow of events, where characters enter and exit the story with surprising casualness. Most of them have come to the lakeside setting for anonymous sex, and so very few of the characters seem fixed in their identities. Our perception of them is always in flux. And as Drew Hunt wrote in November when Stranger played at the Reeling Film Festival, the setting seems like a character itself, conjuring an aura that makes this libertine behavior seem natural.
In its scuzzy way, it’s a heartening film (those put off by the violence and dread of Stranger by the Lake might find this a comforting alternative)—not least because it paints such an affectionate portrait of an independent movie house. I have at least a few straight moviegoer friends who identify positively with Nolot’s characters, and for reasons that have nothing to do with sex. The film’s portrait of cruising dovetails with some bittersweet observations of how moviegoing can give structure to a life. At one point the 50-ish poet played by Nolot muses that he started going to the theater purely for physical pleasure, but now he also goes to remember his youth. Of course he can still experience pleasure there (and he does), but he can’t do so with the same naive enthusiasm he had as a younger man.
