I went to see this French film called Stranger by the Lake today. I had read about it and when it finally showed up at a theater in town, I went to see it. It's a thriller involving a suspected murder at a beach known for gay male cruising. One guy thinks he sees another guy commit murder and then he falls for the suspected murderer and starts hooking up with him at the lake. This film had a lot of cruising and a lot of full-frontal male nudity. (It is French, after all.) What surprised me was the graphic sex. I don't just mean the simulation of sex done with creative positioning and fancy lighting, I mean someone being orally serviced on camera (an actual mouth on someone's genitals) and real ejaculation. People walked out during the show I went to. I wondered as I watched them gather their belongings and leave if they would have walked out on the same actions done by a heterosexual couple. Maybe, maybe not.
I commend foreign filmmakers for not being so hung up and uptight about sex and male bodies as we Americans are. Stranger by the Lake would never have been made by an American studio with American actors. Hollywood studios would never (A) do a movie with a fully male cast that focused on gay men, (B) show gay men having graphic gay sex, or (C) have full-frontal male nudity throughout a movie. And if, by some chance, such a film was ever made, the studio would have a hard time finding an American actor to star in it.
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