Misericordia

Writer-director Alain Guiraudie (Stranger By the Lake) serves up a twisted tale of seduction set in the picturesque French countryside. Returning to beautiful Saint-Martial for the funeral of his former boss, Jérémie (Félix Kysyl) becomes the object of attraction for widow Martine (Catherine Frot). The situation greatly displeases Martine’s son Vincent (Jean-Baptiste Durand), and soon enough there is bloodshed in the woods. Jérémie then finds himself contending with the attention of the police and the amorous intentions of the local abbot (Jacques Develay)…

Edgy, eccentric, and unapologetically queer, Misericordia is also notable for the daring way it blurs boundaries: between maternal love and sexual desire, between violent animosity and same-sex attraction, between natural charisma and crafty calculation. Along with suspense and surprise, Guiraudie generates a subtle, slowly escalating humour; the shift from menace to comedy is executed with wonderful grace. In its movement from the bedroom to the confession booth and back, this film provides a discomfiting, darkly amusing take on human psychology.

Misericordia plays like two films at once: The first is a sinister, small-town homicide story in the vein of Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt, in which a man shows up to wreak havoc on the seemingly innocent. The second is a twisted variation on Pasolini’s Teorema, in which a family is torn apart by a visitor’s pervasive sexuality and refusal to leave them alone. In Guiraudie’s semi-twisted vision of French rural repression, it all makes perfect sense.

Jordan Mintzer, Hollywood Reporter

Rigorous filmmaking of the highest order, controlled and precise to the exclusion of anything extraneous.

Ankhit Jhunjhunwaia, The Playlist

Unsettlingly offbeat… Giraudie’s trademark is to infuse genre dalliances with mordant wit and a deliciously peculiar, defiant queerness.

Jessica Kiang, Variety