So here’s France’s best film of 2024, in the esteemed Cahiers du Cinéma’s estimation at any rate. Which may come as a surprise to many in the anglosphere, where Misericordia came and went without making much of a stir, as Alain Guiraudie’s films so often do.
It’s a slight return to Guiraudie’s most well received film (a finger in the air poll only), 2013’s Stranger by the Lake, which set a “cosy” murder mystery at a secluded countryside spot where gay men convene to have sex with each other. Guiraudie opened that film with shots of penises in mid frame and continued in much the same vein, the Poirot-esque murder investigation regularly taking a break so one man could go down on another, and so on, while other men stood around to watch.
Guiraudie is a master of “What? What?” disingenuous incredulity and is up to the old tricks again here, with a story about a young man who returns to the village where he used to work in the local bakery. The old head baker has just died and Jérémie (Félix Kysyl) is back to attend the funeral, pay his respects to the widow (Catherine Frot, always a good sign), perhaps say hello to a couple of people he knew. And then leave again.
Except he doesn’t leave. Instead, to the increasing infuriation of the dead man’s son, Vincent (Jean-Baptiste Durand), Jérémie hangs about, at the invitation of widow Martine, and even starts to consider moving back. Why don’t you re-open the bakery, Martine suggests. When Jérémie runs out of clean clothes after a few days, Martine lends him some of the dead man’s. This only infuriates Vincent even more.
Why so angry? Is there more to the seemingly pleasant Jérémie than meets the eye? When Jérémie suddenly starts making social visits to Walter (David Ayala), a middle-aged man who lives alone on the other side of town, it’s Walter’s turn to get angry. He eventually reaches for his shotgun to make Jérémie go away. Sometimes a shotgun is not just a shotgun?
There’s also another solitary male in the village, the local priest, who has an unnerving habit of popping up when least expected. He will become increasingly important.
Those are our dramatis personae and with a few other minor characters Guiraudie spins them all into a blank-faced farce about illicit and buried relationships re-surfacing, leading to violence and murder.
This is the classic cat among the pigeons story of the outsider who arrives to stir everything up, with Jérémie as the aggravating animal, a man who is harmless and yet also seems ready to have sex with someone, or maybe everyone – Vincent, Walter, the priest, the widow, who might it be?
It is highly amusing but in an almost ambient way. Nothing is said out loud. Forceful desire gets the deadpan treatment, Guiraudie shoots it all entirely without cues, or hints – nothing from the actors, nothing in terms of dramatic lighting or soundscapes or the gentle score. Not a metaphor, not a symbol. The nearest we get is Jacques Develay as the priest, who makes the abbé a sly old goat. As close as we get to the a nudge in the ribs, there’s more than a hint of the old-school farceur in Develay’s performance. His abbé is something right out of an old-school French film.
It’s all very French and deliberately so. Pastis is drunk in quantity, mushrooms are foraged in the woods, there are a couple of bumbling cops who do more sitting around and chatting than investigating once The Bad Thing happens. And, I mean, an abbé? Meanwhile, the spirit of Henri-Georges Clouzot’s fabulous 1955 movie Les Diaboliques seems to hover over it all. Which is probably lurching us into spoiler territory so let’s leave it there. Except to say that Cahiers du Cinéma don’t have anything to apologise for.
Misericordia – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2025
