Lady of the Lake (1998)
(In French, On Cable TV, August 2022) Little-known French-Canadian horror film Lady of the Lake could have sunk even further in obscurity if it wasn’t for local horror channel Frissons TV’s ongoing efforts to unearth forgotten horror films made in Quebec, and arranging for a prime-time showing accompanied by an interview with the filmmaker. In Lady of the Lake’s case, Frissons TV got filmmaker Maurice Deveraux out of “retirement” (so to speak—he hasn’t written or directed a film since 2007, but now works in audiovisual production and is writing/drawing a comic book series) so that he could talk about both Lady of the Lake and his follow-up film End of the Line in a nice showcase for his work. Let all viewers be warned: Lady of the Lake is a rough watch in spots. Executed on a threadbare budget, rather more ambitious than reasonable (with a time-travelling subplot on a micro-budget) and filmed with mid-1990s analog technology, it doesn’t compare with what even a modern iPhone is capable of doing. But at the same time, the gritty nature of the film makes its achievements seem all the more remarkable: Numerous complex underwater shots confound the imagination until you hear Deveraux reveal that they were largely shot in a public pool with a glass sidewall. Heading to Quebec’s rural areas is a good way to get both modern and historical sequences. The story itself will feel familiar, with a witch manifesting herself as a sexy young woman (Tennyson Loeh) but Deveraux has the good sense to avoid making the film too literal—after some awkward early moments, the film finds a much better groove by positioning itself at the edge of dreams and reality. I’m not saying that the result is perfect—I had absolutely no attachment or sympathy to the lead actor, and the film could have benefited from another script rewrite to make its structure more meaningful, raise the stakes and make the result less repetitive. But French-Canadian underdog fondness oblige, Lady of the Lake doesn’t play all that badly today—although you need to approach it more as a visual poem than a sharply-edged plotting machine.