It's Just Like The Movies

I will leave it to the other divas to go all-out for Misericordia, Alain Guiraudie’s newest yarn of gale male entropy. Rather than surveying the inhabitants of an isolated gay beach humid with cruising and murder, our entrypoint is Jérémie (Felix Kysyl, one of those gay guys equally legible as being in his late 20’s and early 40’s), a normal-seeming guy returning to his tiny-ass hometown of Saint-Martial for his former boss’s funeral. It’s not meant to be a long visit, but he takes up residence with the man’s widow (Catherine Frot), and one night’s layover becomes slightly more indefinite. They seem to carry a mutual pining for the dead boss, giving the characters and the actors and poignant bit of backstory behind their relationship. Her bald, idiot son Vincent (Jean-Baptiste Durand) disapproves of this, not understanding their relationship even a little bit and assuming Jérémie is out to fuck his mom. Idiot behavior.

The tightly controlled repetitions and perverse, violent upheavals reminded me a little too much of Stranger by the Lake’s overall blueprint for Misericordia to land as truly novel in structure or tone. It’s less visually stylized or outwardly erotic, though these are not automatic downgrades. Genius cinematographer Claire Mathon makes the hazy, autumnal atmosphere tangible and intriguing, making this town with seemingly twelve residents feel unmoored from any larger geographic reality. Editor Jean-Christophe Hym is just as essential, perhaps even more so, at making this tale seem both intensely forward-moving and capable of sidewinding in any new direction. It’s amazing Misericordia feels so rigorously assembled and plotted without becoming strictly predictable. Less eros

But where Stranger struck me as front-loaded with its best ideas before gradually losing steam as it approaches its climax, Misericordia only gets sneakier and more layered in its second half. The inevitable confrontation between Jérémie and Vincent leads to two particular, lively developments. One: the two detectives, written with a penchant for materializing into scenes from thin air and played with an ideal deadpan, add the right bit of comedic menace to the proceedings. They’re much more interesting than the detection subplot in Stranger by the Lake. Two: After repeatedly popping up truffle hunting in the woods, Jacques Develay’s town priest takes center stage in a wholly unexpected way. His assured, unflappable certainty about Jérémie’s best course of action makes you wonder what lives this man has lived before he took his vows and settled up in Saint Martial. Develay deepens Misericordia considerably as a crime yarn and a tale of gay men acting on smothered desires, and he ensures the film ends on some of its strongest passages – as well as its most shockingly large surprise.