Vicky Krieps Gutland Lake Scene (2017)

A stranger on the run turns up in a Luxembourg farming village at harvest time, and the prettiest woman in town takes him home the same night. If that sounds too good to be true, congratulations: you’ve understood the movie.

Gutland (2017): Lucy and Jens in the grass by the lake, then her swim (130s)

What happens in Gutland

Govinda Van Maele’s debut feature follows Jens (Frederick Lau), a German drifter hiding from something, who wanders into a village looking for harvest work and gets a cold welcome, until Lucy, the mayor’s daughter and a single mother, invites him into her bed. After that the village can’t do enough for him: a job, a caravan, new clothes. He can’t work out why, and neither can you.

The scene comes about forty minutes in. Lucy lies topless in the grass beside Jens, then peels off the rest and heads into the lake for a swim. It plays like a postcard from the happiest summer of his life, which is precisely what should worry him. The Hollywood Reporter credited Krieps with “an angelic lightness,” and she’s never lighter than here.

Luxembourg sent the film to the Oscars as its foreign-language submission. It was shot on 35mm over 37 days in December 2016, when she was 33. It’s ninth on the Vicky Krieps scene list. For a swim with a much sadder undertow, see the opening of More Than Ever.

Vicky Krieps as Lucy lying in the grass, Gutland (2017)

Film: Gutland (2017) · TIFF Discovery, September 8, 2017; Luxembourg, May 2, 2018 · written and directed by Govinda Van Maele · Vicky Krieps as Lucy Loschetter, Frederick Lau as Jens

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