Miséricorde is a strange, beguiling, prize-winning, critic-seducing French thriller

One of the strangest films of the past year, Miséricorde has a strange probing tone. The latest film from the great french filmmaker, Alain Guirandie, the film follows the return of Jérémie to his hometown for an old friend’s funeral. The town is damp and wet, overflowing with strange characters. What was supposed to be a brief stay, is continually extended, as Jérémie finds himself lost in the slow, sensual rhythms of grief and small-town living. As Jérémie muses on making a permanent lifestyle change and taking over the local bakery, village tensions explode in unexpected ways.

As the film goes on, it becomes increasingly absurd. Crimes take place and strange interpersonal relationships emerge. The film finds itself increasingly on uneven footing, as it navigates dark comedy and tragedy, in a film that probes deeper into concepts of culpability and guilt. The film has an aura of the “mysterious stranger” genre, as a charismatic outsider disrupts the carefully curated lies people tell themselves. Jérémie, however, isn’t quite a stranger; he grew up in the town and has deep links to the people living there. He’s more like a phantom from the past, one that draws out old tensions. 

One of the film’s greatest pleasures is its unrelenting sensuality which veers from genuinely transgressive to outright silly. In a sleepy town without much going on, the sex lives and habits of its inhabitants become a central point of focus. A wandering stranger, Jérémie takes full advantage of the sleepy horniness of the village people to fulfill his own desires and establish his position within the strange hierarchies of rural life. It also features one of the funniest and most unexpected erections in film history; an insane and risky proposition that suggests the depths of the film’s depravity and commitment to the exploration of power and responsability.

While very much a very pleasurable comedy and thriller, the film also explores the notion of living in a world beset by violence and cruelty. How do we keep on living our lives with our petty dramas amidst so much suffering? Guirandie’s skill as a filmmaker is that the almost baroque absurdity of the narrative doesn’t overtake its more sincere and challenging ideas. 

The pleasure of Miséricorde lies in the fact that it remains mostly inscrutable, a series of scenes and characters who seem difficult to parse, but are nonetheless rooted in a beguiling naturalism. The film is genuinely laugh out loud funny and captures a wistful intensity about the fleeting nature of life that feels both appropriately glib and deadly serious. ■

Miséricorde is now available on VOD.

---

For our latest in film and TV, please visit the Film & TV section.