The unofficial Catholic-themed film canon can welcome a new entrant. Joining such esteemed expressions of paradise lost as “Mean Streets” (1973)—or, really any Martin Scorsese film —“Diary of a Country Priest”(1950)— or any Robert Bresson film—and, yes, “Groundhog Day” (1993), Alain Guiraudie’s “Misericordia” (2024) is a delightful, naughty puzzle that eschews as many expected narrative symbols (no visible fire or brimstone) than it deploys (a priest, lots of wine) in this sub-genre. While it invests perhaps an excess of screentime to philosophical dialogue and religious moralizing, “Misericordia” (French for mercy) is a fresh, frank and deceptively-cozy maze. Set in a sleepy, woodsy village in Guiraudie’s native region of Occitanie, “Misericordia” spreads the sacrifice and guilt deliciously thick and wide, trapping the entire town in a cage of its own making, amounting to a crowdsourced flogging that not one of them is eager to escape from willingly.
Arriving into his hometown bewildered yet mysteriously resolute, Jérémie (Félix Kysyl) greets the widow Martine (Catherine Frot) or his former boss, the town’s only baker. Accepting his sincere condolences, Martine makes way for her son Vincent (Jean-Baptiste Durand) to welcome his old friend and Yahztee pal, the extra kiss on Jérémie’s cheek proves itself to be less a French ritual of affection than a sly suggestion that there’s some imbalance in this shaky relationship, and it’s not just because they’re all in mourning. Guiraudie may repeat certain plot points (unrequited queer lust) or character types (lonely, horny rural men), but he hasn’t made the same film twice. Of course, “Misericordia” does share common ground with “That Old Dream That Moves” (2001) and the brilliant “Stranger By The Lake” (2013), but it ultimately stands alone as a bizarre sort of anarchist, Atheist romp rather than an elliptical cautionary tale.
Subtle and Visually-arresting
Guiraudie (who directed and wrote the original screenplay) has publicly acknowledged that his rural Catholic upbringing inspired “Misericordia,” which loops from sin (murder) to repentance (in a whip-smart reverse-confessional scene) to forgiveness (for whom, and from whom, remains unclear). And if this narrative arc wasn’t clear enough, the town’s priest (a rock-solid Jacques Develay, who’s also rock-hard in the film’s funniest moment) says as much, coaching Jérémie quite literally off the ledge, after the aimless boy’s rage ran amok. The chemistry between Father Phillipe and Jérémie is thrilling and credible in the same way that Jérémie’s boyish, freighted antagonism with Vincent is foretelling, but this destabilized tone is never all hot or all cold. In Guiraudie’s cinematic universe, every scene and person matters, and even though Jérémie is a wandering, lost soul, there’s ample humor and pathos in the searching.
Father Phillipe’s monologues might tread towards heavy-handed sermonizing, but the film overall is so subtle and visually arresting (the great Claire Mathon handled the cinematography, as she did on “Stranger”) that its rare expository missteps are forgivable. And, it’s possible that we are so trained to observe Guiraudie’s most exacting details that the film’s modest over-investment in telling over showing calls an outsized amount of attention to itself like an imperfect, deformed mushroom in the forest. Still, like Jérémie, “Misericordia” pursues redemption in some treacherous, exhilarating places and finds it thanks largely to a sturdy ensemble of wounded, weary neighbors like Walter (David Ayala) who gently guide the collective from crime to punishment to recovery.
Expressing Love and Bewilderment
And it must be said that for all of Guiraudie’s oft-cited maker’s marks—most reviews mention the middle-aged male bodies and their dicks—one deserves special mention here: the faces. From Walter’s (who could be a character actor from “The Baker’s Wife” (1938) pouty mug to Vincent’s (his cleft lip evokes a bald Joaquin Phoenix) menacing gaze, each face has its own complex, withheld story, neither all torment nor all happiness. The wear and tear of life is visible, and even the stolid Martine struggles to smile or frown—perhaps the years have taught her to hide extreme emotions. And so the fresh, unfamiliar Teorema named Jérémie—youth undimmed after all these years—rouses and arouses the townspeople the most, inciting unexpected sexual awakening and, perhaps inevitably, irrevocable violence.
Despite an uncertain alignment with the more obviously Catholic-obsessed films, the film’s strangest bedfellow is “Groundhog Day.” When Vincent shocks Jérémie awake at 4 a.m., the camera lingers on the alarm clock, personifying it—and time—as a giggling antagonist. Repetition is the enemy of these burnt-out lifers and it takes the death of a baker and resurrection of Jérémie to liven the community, forcing everyone see their own shadows but walk away from their protective yet suffocating shelter. Father Phillippe’s best line is that “Death is a good thing,” and that could function as the film’s tagline, suggesting not just that dying is inevitable, but that it makes room for life and rebirth. Expressing love and bewilderment at these flawed folks, Guiraudie places his arm around the entire community and says— to quote Sunny, who sang out from Phil’s alarm clock in “Groundhog Day”—I got you, babe.
