Cast of gay cruising thriller with unsimulated sex scenes were warned they'd have to be naked '90 percent of the time'
The cast of a raunchy French thriller set in a gay cruising spot were warned they’d have to be naked on camera for the majority of the time when signing up for the film.
The 2013 movie, dubbed ‘Kill Me By Your Name’ on reviews site Letterboxd, features unsimulated sex scenes and follows Franck (Pierre Deladonchamps), who falls for a man he knows to be a murderer.
The sun-soaked nail-biter, which we’re revisiting as part of a series on LGBTQ+ films for pride month, gives a rare cinematic insight into cruising culture and the world of casual, al fresco sex.
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Stranger by the Lake explores the dark cocktail of sex and danger, with some reading it as an allegory for the AIDs crisis. In a memorable exchange, Franck is asked by a policeman why he continues frequenting a spot where there was recently a brutal killing. He replies: “We can’t stop living.”
Pretty much every scene in Stranger by the Lake is shot outdoors in dazzling sunlight at the man-made Lake of Sainte-Croix in Provence, and the cast are almost exclusively completely nude.
Director Alain Guiraudie was upfront about this when casting the film, explaining to IndieWire: “It’s also a film where probably you would have to be 75 to maybe even 90 percent of the time be naked.
“There were a lot of actors who simply refused to come to the casting call because they knew this in advance and were not interested in doing it.”
To make his actors feel more comfortable, Guiraudie stripped off himself on-set and during rehearsals.
Deladonchamps told the Arts Desk of the director: "Actually, he’s in the movie – he’s the first person my character meets on the beach. He’s a naturist himself.
"But you know, when we got to the set I dealt with the nudity by just telling myself, 'It’s a costume, it’s not me'."
As you can imagine, being completely naked with your co-star and having to star in numerous seduction scenes was tough.
Deladonchamps continued by opening up on the relationship with his co-star Christophe Paou: “We were a bit shy, of course, but we made friends and we still are.
“I personally said to myself before, ‘Don’t ask yourself too many questions'. What am I going to do? How is my body? Because I’m naked, and I’m doing this, this, this, this… I just didn’t want to think too much.”
As you might expect, preparation was key. Guiraudie said of the sex scenes: “We worked out all of the positions very carefully so that by the time it came to shoot the scenes, all of the actors and myself as well, we were very, very prepared about what was going to happen.”
There are multiple unsimulated sex scenes in the film - which, viewers be warned, leave little to the imagination - but Guiraudie opted to use body doubles, likely much to Deladonchamps and Paou’s relief.
However awkward some of the scenes were to film, the end result was a stellar erotic thriller which blends woozy sun-drenched naturalism with a nail-biting premise. A decade on, it’s still a classic of LGBTQ+ cinema, with a Rotten Tomatoes critics score of 94 percent.
Joe Lipsett of the Horror Queers podcast called the film ‘an essential queer horror text that tackles cruising, sex and death, voyeurism, body image, gay microcosms, STIs, toxic relationship, homophobia, and gay friendships’.
Nicholas Bell of IONCINEMA.com said it ‘hearkens back to an era of daring cinema too rarely seen today’.
If this has piqued your interest, Stranger by the Lake is available to rent on Amazon prime and Fandango at Home.
Topics: Film and TV, LGBTQ, France
Simon Fearn