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VENICE 2008 Horizons / France

A painterly exploration of desire and jealousy

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The last film to be presented in the Horizons section at the Venice Film Festival this year is Un lac [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
(“A Lake”), a French production from director Phillipe Grandieux.

In the rugged landscape of an undefined country, sometime during late autumn and early winter, the obsessive relationship between two siblings (Dmitry Kubasov, Natalie Rehorova) grows ugly when a stranger (Alexei Solonchev) arrives.

Using this age-old storytelling device – also put to good use in the aptly titled Finnish Venice Days film The Visitor [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
– Grandieux spins a story about archetypical desires and fears.

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The film has next to no dialogues, and the few sentences in French that are there sound more like otherworldly groans than perfectly composed sentences, as if delivered with great pain (the actors are from Russia and Czech Republic). Grandieux’s audacious choice makes sense when taken in combination with the mysterious location.

Un lac was not only written and directed but also shot by Grandieux. His talents as a cinematographer are certainly noteworthy, with his delicate, often barely lit work reminiscent of the great chiaroscuro of Titian and Tintoretto and the beautifully menacing and foreboding romanticism of Friedrich.

Mandrake Films produced the picture, in co-production with Arte France Cinéma and Rhône-Alpes Cinéma and with backing from Région Rhônes-Alpes, Canal +, CNC and London-based Blue Light.

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