In the quiet aftermath of a murder or the solitude of walking through the woods or returning to a place and feelings you haven’t been around, the image of the sky, seen through the breaks in tall trees. It’s a classic, wonderful image. In the hands of Alain Guiraudie, the use of this shot is evocative, foreboding, relaxing, whatever the context of any moment requires. That versatility and fluidity fits the director’s latest film, Misericordia, perfectly.
Misericordia tackles jealously, secrets, anger, and lust, among other themes. This is only the second film of Guiraudie’s I’ve seen, but it feels very much of a piece with his previous film Stranger by the Lake (which we covered in a Two Cents post back in June). Misericordia follows Jérémie (Félix Kysyl) as he returns to his small hometown for the funeral of one of his mentors. This brings Jérémie back into the orbit of his mentor’s widow, Martine (Catherine Frot) and her son Vincent (Jean-Baptiste Durand). There is also a curious priest, Abbé Grisolles (Jacques Develay) who pops up throughout the film. The death that happens offscreen and kickstarts the story and brings these characters together is an omen that Guiraudie milks for tension and sinister laughs.
This movie captures the elusive feeling of living under a threat, in a combustible scenario where you are the interloper, instigator, and accelerant. Jérémie navigates his return home about as well as possible. That is, if you accept at face value that his intentions in returning are sincere. I’ve watched the movie a couple times and I believe that to be the case, but I think Guiraudie’s script and direction leaves it open enough that adventurous minds can follow that path to some interesting places.
One of the darker places the story goes is with the relationship between Jérémie and Vincent. Friends going back to childhood, now the relationship comes across as strange and antagonistic. Partly because Vincent doesn’t like Jérémie hanging around his home and mother but, more importantly, because of some deeper rift that isn’t explicitly stated. Each scene between the two is tinged with the potential for anything to happen, and eventually something does happen in the woods. There is a great deal of frustration between these two characters in particular, but this thread runs through nearly every character combination in the film. Even when characters are being clear with their thoughts, feelings, and intentions, there’s still an undercurrent of menace lurking. People in real life are complicated and these fictional people are no different.
Guiraudie leans into the unknowable nature of the human psyche. It’s impossible to ever know, with complete certainty, what is going on in a person’s mind or heart. To achieve that with these characters is a testament to Guiraudie’s writing and direction and, of course, the actors who are uniformly great throughout the film.
Misericordia is a movie that draws the viewer into its small village in multiple ways. There is the heightened emotion the comes with death, exacerbated by the drama that comes with people working through conflicting emotions, never knowing which one will spring to the fore in a given moment. The more I think about Misericordia the more I get caught up in the world Guiraudie is presenting. The story and conflict are rooted in these people, even when it goes to more cinematic places, so everything we learn about these people only makes them and the story more complicated. It’s a fascinating web that I want to stay caught up in.
Misericordia is available to stream on The Criterion Channel and on Blu-ray via Criterion Presents
