Miséricorde
Darkly comic thriller about a man who returns to his native village in the French countryside to attend a funeral. Compared to Hitchcock and Pasolini, and chosen as best film of 2024 by Cahiers du Cinéma.
An immediate and uncanny paranoia attends the return of Jérémie to his rural hometown of Saint-Martial in southwestern France. The visit is precipitated by the death of his former boss, the town’s master baker, with whom he was presumably in love. Appealing yet mysterious, Jérémie’s sensual presence is immediately and progressively destabilizing to all around him, as he prolongs his stay with the widow Martine, who also happens to be the mother of his childhood friend, the brutish Vincent. The duo’s interactions are terse and laden with resentment, but clearly erotically charged. When a struggle takes a wrong turn, Miséricorde swerves into noir territory with absurdist undertones, and an ensuing investigation spirals around a loner neighbour, ineffectual gendarmes, and a nosy country priest – seemingly the only inhabitants in this dewy, mountainous village perpetually bathed in twilight.
A recurring theme in Guiraudie’s work is how village life shapes people. The rustling of the wind, the fall of dusk, the silence of a sleeping village, against this background the plot unfolds in which the emphasis is on interpersonal relationships. What makes individuals attracted to each other, for better or worse? The interplay of melancholy, humour, darkness and beauty produces a unique and timeless film. (source: www.tiff.net, adapted)