What We Do in the Shadows: The Representation of Cruising in Three French Films

Sexual cruising—a practice often associated with men who have sex with other men in public spaces—has been written about from a number of disciplinary perspectives, including literature, literary and cultural studies, queer theory, geography and sociology. However, its representation in cinema is restricted to a small number of films and rarely has cruising in cinema been a focus of critical attention in its own right. This article will look at the changing functions of cruising in French cinema from the 1980s to the 2010s with a particular focus on three films: Patrice Chereau’s L’Homme blessé (1983), Cyril Collard’s Les Nuits fauves (1992) and Alain Guiraudie’s L’Inconnu du lac (2013). With reference to the writing of Ross Chambers, Leo Bersani, Marc Augé and Jean-Didier Urbain, this article specifically considers how the thematics associated with cruising—danger, criminality, liberty, social class, identity and community—change over time and asks whether there is a future for the cinematic cruising story in the digital age.