Stranger by the Lake (2013) poster
2013 · thriller · drama · french

Stranger by the Lake

Directed by Alain Guiraudie1h 40m2013
ElsewhereIMDb6.917kRT94%Metacritic82TMDB6.3469
  • sombre
  • measured
  • intense
  • bleak
  • cold
Movie DNA

Sombre, measured, measured thriller / drama, grounded in texture. Nihilistic, intimate, cold, hand-scored across twelve axes of taste.

How every film is hand-scored →

Franck spends his summer days hopelessly searching for companionship at a popular cruising spot on the shores of a lake in rural France. One day, he meets Michel, an attractive yet darkly mysterious man and falls blindly in love.

Our read · Stranger by the Lake (2013) reads as a sombre, measured, grounded thriller · drama · french entry — measured in intensity, intimate in scope, cold in temperature, nihilistic in outlook, with a strong directorial signature. Hand-scored on twelve axes of taste — mood, pacing, weirdness, hope, stakes, humour, reality, density, warmth, auteur, intensity, and era — with a derived palette drawn from its dominant cinematography.

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The shape of Stranger by the Lake

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What watching it is actually like.

You want sun-drenched queer desire colliding with cool, dangerous obsession.

ends ambiguousit leaves you shakena slow buildgrips by minute 12attention 5/5earns its lengthsubtitles: full
Date nightWith friendsSoloWith parentsKids around
Heads-upexplicit sexnuditygraphic violence

Skip it tonightSkip if explicit nudity and sudden violence will unsettle your couch.

DNA · twelve axes

The reading.

Each axis is hand-scored — not derived from votes or genre averages. The marker shows where this film sits; the gradient fill uses the film's own cinematography palette.

Mood · HeavyCosy
Pacing · Slow-burnKinetic
Intensity · GentleExtreme
Weirdness · ConventionalSurreal
Hope · NihilisticRedemptive
Stakes · IntimateEpic
Humour · NoneBroad
Reality · GroundedFantastical
Density · SparseTwisty
Warmth · ColdTender
Auteur · TransparentSignature
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