A Lake

Philippe Grandrieux's 2008 film takes place in an unnamed northern country, in an isolated house by a lake. The family live by cutting wood in the forest. The young Alexi has epileptic seizures, and the state that follows them sits at the centre of what the film is trying to describe. Grandrieux abandons narrative almost entirely. There is little dialogue and thin plot; the film works on texture instead. The camera is often out of focus, the light insufficient, the sound of breathing louder than any music. Snow, tree and skin become nearly the same surface. The closeness between the siblings is the film's most unsettling layer and the director explains none of it. It counts among the most extreme examples of the strand in French cinema built on bodily and sensory experience. Who it's for: viewers open to sensory cinema without narrative. Who it's not for: viewers who want a story and characters to follow; the film supplies neither and is physically tiring to watch.