AFI FEST Los Angeles International Film Festival 2009

Cinema is currently being redefined, and Philippe Grandrieux (SOMBRE, LA VIE NOUVELLE) is an artist fully engaged with its reinvention. “I don’t think in terms of stories,” Grandrieux has noted. “To me, these films are objects. They’re plastic. They’re formed.” Set in a misty and remote corner of the French Alps, A LAKE envisions a family living in the woods and supported by the eldest son’s logging, despite his frequent, violent epileptic fits. He adores his sister, perhaps excessively. The arrival of a stranger to help the logging sets off tremors that dislocate the delicate balance of family relationships. In Grandrieux’s hands, this story becomes a complete sensory experience that engages the eye, ear, mind and emotions to their fullest extent. At once intensely physical and metaphysical, Grandrieux’s expression of feeling through light (and its absence), sounds and faces offers a mainline to the subconscious and a slab of experience.

–Robert Koehler