Grandrieux is nothing if not singular, so while this is his most approachable work, it's still not for most. The director seems eternally on the cusp of greatness and this simple chamber drama set amid some of the most striking landscapes in recent memory might be his closest stab yet. In the past he has sometimes come off as a brilliant cinematographer first and a director second, but this elemental material has given him the focus of a master. Indeed, the works that A Lake most readily recalls come from the greats of the medium (to varying degrees, there are tinges here of Dreyer, Bergman, Tarr, Sokurov, Bresson, and Murnau). Comparisons are a disservice though, to a film that seems to invent its own language as it goes. Cinema's power to make nature reflect a character's psyche is fully exploited and in his epileptic protagonist the director has found his purest sensory vessel yet. I think Grandrieux has something better in him yet, but this is a step in the right direction.