Male nudity is a rare thing to witness in cinema — with pornography being the most blatant exception. This is what makes the startling frankness, and explicitness, of Stranger by the Lake all the more remarkable. The film, set entirely on a nude male beach, complete with hardcore sex scenes, is by no means a porno.
Winner of two prizes at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival, including the Queer Palm, Stranger by the Lake is an uncompromisingly honest exploration of gay desire and love. The film follows Frank, played by the sensitive Pierre Deladonchamps, on his routine quest for sex and a reprieve from the summer heat. He forms a friendship with a frumpy, recently divorced straight man who sits off to the side and lusts after a hunky mustachioed paramour.
Delandonchamps spends most of the time fully nude or getting nude. As he told Xtra during our sit-down interview at the Toronto International Film Festival, “For me, nudity was like a costume. I am not like that all the time in my life. So when I was getting naked on the set, I was someone else.”
Stranger by the Lake plays the New York Film Festival on Sept 30 and Oct 2 and Ottawa’s LGBT Film Festival on Oct 18.
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