What to watch: Misericordia
The latest film from Alain Guiraudie.
The latest film from Alain Guiraudie (Stranger by the Lake) is Misericordia.
Jérémie (Félix Kysyl) returns to the small village of Saint-Martial for the funeral of a man he used to work for. In no hurry to return home to Toulouse, Jérémie stays on with the widowed wife of his boss - attempting to reconnect with the community in which he lived as a young man.
But Jérémie's motives are unclear and he seems to be a disruptive presence within the close-knit village.
Guiraudie's uncompromising approach to storytelling is on full display here - he doesn't hesitate to leave the audience uncomfortable, unsettled, and unsure of the motivations of the characters he has created.
This is a story told through observation - requiring the audience to try and figure out the narrative arc as we watch unpredictable people make unexpected choices.
In simple terms, the themes being explored are love and compassion. Misericordia is a Latin word that translates to English as "mercy". But the strength of this film is Guiraudie's ability to find the darkness in human behaviour and present questionable responses and morality as reasonable and understandable.
This is a lot more complex than Stranger by the Lake, and much more ambitious. The film ends with much still unexplained and unknown, but this is contemporary French cinema at its most exciting.
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