Misericordia (Miséricorde)

 

Writer/director Alain Guiraudie

MISERICORDIA (Miséricorde)                    B                                                                       France  Spain  Portugal  (104 mi)  2024  ‘Scope  d: Alain Guiraudie

For me, Misericordia goes beyond the question of forgiveness, it embodies the idea of empathy and understanding others, transcending all moral boundaries.                                                    —Alain Guiraudie

Listed as the #1 film of the year by French publications Cahiers du Cinéma: Top Ten Films of 2024 and Les Inrocks: Our Top Films of 2024, and a major hit in France, from the maker of Stranger By the Lake (L'inconnu du lac) (2013), which was listed as the #1 film of the year by Cahiers du Cinéma: Top Ten Films of 2013, and Staying Vertical (Rester vertical) (2016), this is a mysteriously odd Dostoevskian Crime and Punishment morality tale, where Guiraudie loves his male characters to be psychologically complex, doing things that are completely unexpected, where an examination of masculinity is always at the heart of his films.  This is basically an examination of sin, largely viewed from a Catholic perspective, as Catholicism remains the dominant religion in France, providing an unorthodox yet contemporary reading, where it’s less about punishment and more about atonement, adding an interesting layer to criminality, where the church actually sides with the offender, believing that soul can still be saved, with the church promoting the idea of mercy, which is the title of the film in French, effectively playing a prominent role, with surprisingly little thought given to the victims.  It never actually clicks with viewers, however, succumbing to its own ambiguity, though it may be driven by the social media age, with everyone primarily thinking only of themselves, where we may have lost the capacity to be moved by the grief, sorrows, and miseries of others.  This may recall the priest in Hitchcock’s I CONFESS (1953), though it feels more like a grim outgrowth of his morbid comedy of errors, The Trouble With Harry (1955), while some think this veers more in the direction of Bruno Dumont, and others draw comparisons to the homoeroticism of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s TEOREMA (1968) or Anthony Page’s ABSOLUTION (1978), with Guiraudie suggesting criminality is an extension of physical desire, seemingly inevitable, a part of the existential human equation, with the church stepping in to provide important context.  Based in part on Guiraudie’s 2021 novel, Rabalaïre, while also drawing from Now the Night Begins from 2018, born and raised a Catholic, this feels like an extension of the ethical principles advanced by French writer and philosopher Georges Bataille, an important influence on the director’s work, so prominently featured in Christophe Honoré’s sexually provocative MA MÈRE (2006), where the sex is wildly exaggerated, exposing a quest for transcendence through base sexual indulgence.  Like that film, this can feel rather preposterous as well, defying convention with a kind of far-fetched, alternate reality.  Bataille was himself a failed priest, and was “excommunicated” by his fellow Surrealists, yet his philosophy has resonated widely and helped pave the way to contemporary critical theory.  By embracing everything rejected, feared, or held in contempt, Bataille reclaimed everyday parts of human existence, becoming associated with a literature of transgression, where he “consistently uncovers and affirms the unmistakable signature of violence, sacrifice, transgression, abjection, sensuality, excess, passion, waste, and horror at the heart of our erotic desires,” Georges Bataille (1897-1962): Life & Letters, offering a more primal aspect of human sexuality.  Guiraudie is a gay filmmaker and novelist whose examinations of sexual desire have always been at the heart of his pictures, but this feels less about the sexual act itself, and more about the unreleased tension stemming from the unavoidability of our desires and their destructive power, which may be seen as guiding all of our actions, for better or for worse, often playing out in a comic chain of events.  Accordingly, a lonely priest figures prominently in this film, shepherding a man who commits a mortal sin, a murder by passion, yet the priest shields him from authorities, perplexingly guiding him from imminent arrest, creating what amounts to a completely unorthodox and possibly corrupt reading of sin and redemption, yet there’s no mistaking the Buñuelian religious hypocrisy, becoming a metaphor for the church as a whole, which has been condoning wrongs and covering all kinds of atrocities under the cloak of love for a few thousand years.

Opening on a long shot seen through the windshield driving down a country road, this is our introduction to the small rural town of Saint-Martial, as Jérémie (Félix Kysyl), an out of work baker from Toulouse, returns to his hometown for the first time in ten years to attend his former boss's funeral, Jean-Pierre (Serge Richard), a bakery owner who is the former mentor that taught him the art of pastries and baguettes, a man that he holds in great affection.  After visiting the body in the home of his widow, Martine (Catherine Frot), the village priest (Jacques Develay) delivers the eulogy in the breezy outdoor funeral service, suggesting love is eternal, as Christians believe “death is not an end,” but simply “a passage into the kingdom of love and light.”  Few details are offered about Jérémie’s past, but there are suggestions that it is a troubled history.  While Martine graciously offers her home, implying this is not a time she wants to be alone, her hot-headed son Vincent (Jean-Baptiste Durand), who lives elsewhere with his wife and young son, views his intrusion with open hostility, erupting in moments of playful hands-on fighting that is more typical of the roughhouse tactics of teenage boys, where it’s clear these two don’t exactly get on, as Vincent seems furious that Jérémie is staying in his old room, still filled with all his personal memorabilia, including sports posters on the wall.  It’s important to note that Catherine Frot is a bonafide star in France, but much less known abroad, where she appears in all three episodes of the wonderfully inventive Lucas Belvaux TRILOGY (2002), also Denis Dercourt’s THE PAGE TURNER (2006), and Xavier Giannoli’s MARGEURITE (2015), working for the first time with this director, providing a charming contrast of calm between the flared tensions of the two men.  As Jérémie prolongs his stay, however, his presence seems to unleash an undercurrent of unease among the residents, continually stirring up old resentments from the past, becoming an irritant to many who come into contact with him, who wonder why he’s returned, where the mysterious behavior of the characters is never less than intriguing, submerged in dark motives and repressed sexual desires.  While there is little sex to speak of, none actually happening onscreen, Guiraudie’s film is immersed in psychological projections and unfulfilled desires.  Plagued by doubts about his own character, Jérémie’s intentions are never actually revealed, like why he fled the town in the first place, which is part of the existential mystery of a film that vociferously defies viewer expectations and is never easy to digest, yet the way this is envisioned feels like it exists in a netherworld somewhere between a dream and reality, where the dark forest, and the pervasive role of mushrooms, add murky elements of a perversely discomforting fairy tale.  Jérémie has difficulty sleeping, often awakening in the middle of the night to either examine family photograph albums or go on long walks in the forest, presumably to seek out mushrooms, but he has no real knack for it.  These incidents are preceded by a glimpse of the digital clock in the darkened bedroom, alerting viewers to the time, with Vincent storming into the room at the crack of dawn to offer a stern warning that he needs to immediately get out of town and never come back, startling him before heading off to work for his 5 am shift, and on another occasion he follows Jérémie into the woods, only this time the fisticuffs are for real, with a bullying Vincent threatening that he needs to leave immediately.  These volatile explosions leave viewers on edge, wondering what secrets Jérémie could possibly expose, exacerbated by visits to another childhood friend, Walter (David Ayala), who is also best friends with Vincent, so there’s an underlying feeling of resentment each time one of these guys pays him a visit, bordering on adolescent jealousy, though Guiraudie never seeks resolutions to clear the air, instead allowing lingering resentments to fester.  

Nature plays a prominent part in this film, spending a lot of time in the woods, while the changing autumnal colors of the rural farmlands add a bucolic beauty to the landscape, gorgeously filmed by Claire Mathon, one of the more prestigious cinematographers working today, having filmed his earlier films, while also collaborating with Mati Diop’s Atlantics (Atlantique) (2019), Céline Sciamma’s 2019 Top Ten List #2 Portrait of a Lady On Fire (Portrait de la jeune fille en feu) (2019) and Petite Maman (2021), and also Alice Diop’s 2023 Top Ten List #3 Saint Omer (2022), films that vibrate with sensuality and grace, literally bathed in the iridescence of light.  This film, on the other hand, accentuates scenes that take place in the dark, adding a somber and sinister tone.  Only a few characters actually grace the screen, with almost no extras, so this is a minimalistic, uncluttered aesthetic that largely accentuates the psychological mindset of the characters, accentuating prevailing themes of homoeroticism, guilt, shame, and morality, with a few semi-erect penises that are carefully revealed at precise moments, giving a clear indication of what’s driving the moment, like an essential truth that cannot be questioned, while also representing a force of nature.  Balancing that physical reality is the spiritual presence of the priest, who seems to pop up out of nowhere at times, representing the moral conscience of the community, though this priest is not like any other, a far cry from Bresson’s Diary of a Country Priest (Journal d'un curé de campagne) (1951), which is a grim portrayal of self-deprivation, and a profoundly contemplative work where pain and suffering may be the conduit that drives us closer to the Divine.  This priest revels in the grim realities of the everyday working class, painstakingly attempting to contextualize and make sense of acts spiraling out of control, curiously contending death is a good thing, “We need unexpected deaths.  We need accidents.  We need murders,” which further complicates an entangled web of desire, suspicion, and what is described as an “irreparable act,” with the priest exploring themes of guilt, forgiveness, love, death, and the nature of desire, with a focus on the characters’ motivations and the relationships between them.  An unorthodox confessional may be the scene of the film, with a role reversal taking place, as Jérémie hears the priest’s confession, acknowledging he knows who the murderer is, but chooses not to turn him in, where this dilemma between vengeance and forgiveness is an essential Catholic problem, typified by the confession, where no sin is beyond forgiveness.  This scene is mirrored by equally unorthodox police procedures, visiting Jérémie as he sleeps, hoping to extract a confession from his semi-conscious state.  The film has been described as an elegy for impossible love, where eroticism and death are intimately entangled, as Guiraudie’s films typically explore the social and emotional impact of crime, and the inexplicable yet irrepressible power of desire, often in similar settings, particularly the rural south of France where the filmmaker is from, known for conveying a feeling of detachment, where the camera is always placed from the perspective of one of the people involved, typically using fixed shots, and while there is a musical score by Marc Verdaguer, it only appears at the very beginning and end.  At the root of Jérémie’s visit may be the fixated and likely unconsummated love he still holds for the deceased (which Martine is at peace with, while clearly Vincent is not, creating an unexplored dynamic), as Vincent is now irrationally threatened by his extended visit, believing he has an erotic interest in his widowed mother and is taking advantage of her vulnerability.  While all indications are that Jérémie is gay and/or bisexual, he also tends to cause trouble and stir things up, remaining something of an enigma, not particularly sympathetic, hard to read, and sexually unidentifiable, representative of those Guiraudie protagonists who are drifters, where nothing truly defines them.  Enveloped in small town repressions and petty jealousies, it all unfolds as a darkly comic crime thriller, deceptively subtle in its sensuous subversion of the film noir genre, transitioning into an increasingly absurd murder investigation, with a textured, engrossing kind of atmosphere, where the perpetrator repeatedly makes up stories about what happened, as lies only lead to more lies, with wayward desire giving way to impulsive behavior that instead of turning into a disaster, potentially leads to a rather unexpected road to liberation. 

Alain Guiraudie's Closet Picks  Criterion selections (3:44)

Vermiglio

 

Writer/director Maura Delpero

Delpero with the Silver Lion at Venice

The director on the set

VERMIGLIO                         B                                                                                               Italy  France  Belgium  (119 mi)  2024  d: Maura Delpero

My father left us one summer afternoon. Before closing them forever, he looked at us with the big, amazed eyes of a child. I had already heard that when you get older you become a little child again, but I didn’t know that those two ages could merge into a single face. In the months that followed, he came to visit me in a dream. He had returned to his childhood home, in Vermiglio. He was six years old and had a toothless smile and the legs of a mountain goat and was carrying this film under his arm: four seasons in the life of his large family. A story of children and adults, amongst deaths and births, disappointments and rebirths, of their holding each other tight in the turns of life, and out of a community growing into individuals. Of the smell of wood and warm milk on freezing mornings. With the distant and ever-present war, experienced by those who remained outside the great machine: the mothers who watched the world from a kitchen, with newborns dying because of blankets that were too short, the women who feared they were already widows, the farmers who waited for children who never returned, the teachers and priests who replaced the fathers. A story of war without bombs, or great battles. In the uncompromising logic of the mountain that every day reminds man how small he is. 

Vermiglio is a landscape of the soul, a “family saying” that lives inside me, on the threshold of the unconscious, an act of love for my father, his family and their small village. Travelling through a personal time, it wants to pay homage to a collective memory.

—Maura Delpero, Director’s Statement, VERMIGLIO

Winner of the Grand Jury Prize (2nd Place) at the 2024 Venice Film Festival, while also winning the Best Film in the feature film competition at the Chicago Film Festival (Festival Award Winners - Cinema Chicago), and even shortlisted for the Best International Feature at the Academy Awards, but failed to make the final cut, so this film is critically acclaimed, but sluggishly paced and only mildly engaging, where it feels overly drawn out, with a novelesque sweep of too many characters that can be challenging, yet the remote location in the Italian Alps is breathtaking.  Written, directed, and produced by Maura Delpero, an Italian director who studied literature both in Italy and France before shifting gears to study film at the Professional Training Center of SICA in Buenos Aires, making several documentaries before releasing her first feature, MATERNAL (2019), inspired by her own experiences as a teacher in Argentina.  This is another intensely personal project, creating a family portrait inspired by her own experiences, yet enlarged, becoming a collective memory movie.  Not nearly as successful as Sarah Polley’s collective voices drama, 2023 Top Ten List #1 Women Talking, which utilizes a similar technique, but Polley’s characters are more fully formed, each one readily identified by viewers, creating substantially greater dramatic impact that this more subdued film lacks.  Part of it is the source material, as Polley drew from a novel by Miriam Toews that features almost exclusively women, described by the novelist as “an imagined response to real events,” where their agenda is clearly recognizable and heartfelt.  This feels more muddled, rather dark and pessimistic, harder to follow, where not much actually happens, as it’s more of a quietly subtle, observational movie, almost like a documentary, inspired by a love for the cinematic poetry of Ermanno Olmi (more in spirit than his directorial style), whose looming presence permeates throughout, capturing the experience of work and family, where his films are full of life and dignity, drawing inspiration from his Catholic faith, and can be viewed as simplicity itself, expressed through humor and grace.  Perhaps a throwback to Luchino Visconti’s THE LEOPARD (1963), or even Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon (Das Weiße Band – Eine deutsche Kindergeschichte) (2009), with children prominently in the foreground, also reminiscent of Thomas Hardy novels and their film adaptations, like Michael Winterbottom’s JUDE (1996) or Thomas Vinterberg’s Far From the Madding Crowd (2015), this historical drama is set in a remote location in the mountains with just a few hundred inhabitants near the end of WWII in 1944.  Shot in the Italian neorealist mode with a mostly non-professional cast, the cinematography is a canvas of still life, with a predilection for fixed shots, providing not only insight into the everyday routine, but a static lens observing the tension between tradition and change, between the natural cycle of the changing seasons, and the transformations imposed by the war, filled with quiet moments, disappointments, and the everlasting bonds of family.  Without a trace of sentimentality, there is room for pauses and silences, which become as eloquent as the dialogues, as traces of war linger long after the war ended, upending the social fabric, leading to unemployment and poverty, affecting a significant part of society, which led to the birth of Italian neorealism.  Outside of food shortages and conversational references, along with occasional planes flying overhead, there are no war references, no battles, no bombs exploding, and no graphic violence, as this could be happening at any point in history and the village would function primarily the same, giving the film a timelessness that goes beyond the borders, as it’s more of a time capsule of the living, characterized by long takes and sparse dialogue, where the pace is slow and deliberate, the drama understated, and the silences can feel oppressive.            

Certainly not lacking in ambition, as this film stakes out its claim into largely untold territory, effectively highlighting how many ingrained prejudices and injustices toward women follow us from generation to generation, painting a predominately picturesque portrait of the price we pay, even among our families.  Primary schoolmaster Cesare Graziadei (Tommaso Ragno) and his wife Adele (Roberta Rovelli) have a sprawling family with eight children, and she’s pregnant again.  The older children in their late teens are Lucia (Martina Scrinzi), who embodies the transition from adolescence to adulthood in a world that demands conformity, and her somewhat slacker brother Dino (Patrick Gardner), clearly disillusioned by the idea of being relegated to a life as a common laborer, yet neither can complete their schooling due to the war.  The relentlessly curious Ada (Rachele Potrich) is around fourteen, one of the older students in her father’s schoolhouse, who hides a rebellious streak, while his pet favorite, the more studious Flavia (Anna Thaler), a voracious reader, is eleven.  There are also three younger boys and a baby, with the five oldest sharing two beds in a single bedroom.  There is no electricity in the village, and no indoor plumbing, so the living situation is rustic, where each day begins with the milking of the cows, as a handful of warmed, freshly gathered milk is carefully poured into the bowls of each child as they gather around the table.  Due to the cramped living quarters, no one has any privacy, so individual family members lock themselves into rooms when no one is looking, hide behind corners, or linger in the empty barn, just to have some time to themselves.  For the most part, the film follows three young women, Ada, Lucia, and Flavia, seen chattering among themselves in bed at night, archetypes in a search for emancipation, who move between the bonds of a patriarchal society and their desires for freedom, in a community very enclosed in itself, where the past is always present and where fate is marked by roads already assigned to each.  While there’s not really a story, per se, the film is framed around the interactions between the family and the neighboring community, told in brief vignettes, almost like a family photo album, as their daily routines come to life as they confront teen angst, forbidden desires, infant mortality, and WWII-era deprivation, often resorting to the rosary for their moral transgressions.  Also in the home is Adele’s widowed sister Cesira (Orietta Notari), who is secretly sheltering her son Attilio (Santiago Fondevila) out in the barn along with his illiterate friend Pietro (Giuseppe De Domenico), having brought a wounded and shell-shocked son back home, both fugitives, as they deserted from forced army service under the Nazis, known by the entire village that they are kept hidden, yet they join the family at church every Sunday.  No one stands up to the strict and rigid patriarch Cesare, whose influential position of authority is unchallenged, touching the lives of everyone, bringing education and culture to a region that couldn’t be more isolated, far removed from the rest of the world.  Adele questions her husband’s spending on a phonograph record, believing that money could be better spent on food (“It is food for the soul,” he retorts), but part of the pattern of life is hearing what he listens to intently in his study, including Vivaldi’s ebullient The Four Seasons Concerto No. 2 'Summer' - Allegro non ... YouTube (10:22), which he plays in his classroom, pointing out the intruding sounds of nature, specifically the way the composer uses music to mimic the sounds of birds, yet also the more ponderous reserve of a Chopin Nocturne, Arthur Rubinstein - Chopin Nocturne Op. 9, No. 1 in B flat YouTube (5:27).

Moving from season to season, this rhythm of life story revolves around the budding love affair of Lucia and the Sicilian army deserter Pietro, who are watched carefully by her younger sisters, culminating in their celebratory wedding, where the open-air festivities surrounded by the massive expanse of the Dolomites looming in the background is an extended spectacle, shot in stunning natural light by Mikhail Krichman, the renowned cinematographer of Andrey Zvyagintsev, featuring plenty of food and dancing to the rudimentary sounds of local musicians that make everything feel suspended in time.  It’s fair to say that Pietro may be the least developed character, where a distinct perspective shifts to that of Lucia after the end of the war, as Pietro goes away to visit his family in Sicily and mysteriously disappears, leaving a terrible void in his absence.  Instead the focus is on the influence and authoritative rule of Cesare, a complex character with considerable intellect and a talent for teaching, perhaps the only educated figure in the region, seen taking the kids on long walks into the forest, where in addition to teaching the grade school kids he runs an adult literacy class in the evenings, but despite his love for classical music and literature, he is emotionally distanced from the people around him, where his biggest flaw may be emotional neglect, particularly to those closest to him.  The most well-rounded portrait may be that of Ada, torn between faith and desire, and possibly queer, full of interior conflicts, where much of this world is seen through her prying eyes, tempted by her own desires and discoveries, like sharing private moments with her more assertively bold and “bad influence” friend Virginia (Carlotta Gamba), who likes to wear makeup and is typically seen smoking a cigarette in the barn, or sneaking a peek of erotica photographs kept hidden in her father’s desk, disappointed that he thinks she is underserving of any continuing education, saving that for Flavia alone, who is chosen to be sent away to boarding school in the city, leaving Ada’s options for the future extremely limited.  “Nothing’s special about me,” she confesses in church.  Based on the economic pressures of getting by, the parents can’t afford to send all the children on to further their education, and have to decide who among their daughters shows the most promise for school, and who is better suited to be a housewife, archaic rules that have been handed down for centuries.  The different ages of the sisters embody a different evolution of female desire, one adopting marriage and children, while another exhibits a curiosity about the different paths women may follow, even exploring other possible forms of love, while the youngest sister represents the future, including the possibility of adopting a more modern outlook that may counter tradition, possibly the only one of the sisters who will end up coming out of that suffocating everyday life.  With that in mind, Flavia may be the stand-in for the director, recalling many of her own memories (her father was from this same village, the youngest of a family with ten kids), visually embracing the female characters in their struggles, offering a feminist commentary on how women are trapped in traditional roles in such an unchanging patriarchal society, where the moral fabric of the entire community is formed by women who almost never leave their kitchens.  Extending beyond a war drama, this is something of a meditation on the ability to cope with events and the need to redefine oneself in the face of the challenges of life.  Exploring the fragile balance between collective memory and personal identity, Delpero has created a reminder of what it means to grow up in a small village, where family is the connecting glue, as no single character’s story is elevated over any others, and the film is less the narrative of an individual or couple than that of a collective, speaking a strange local dialect that must be translated to Italian, even playing with subtitles in Italian theaters.  One constant heard throughout is the relentless sound of baby noises, from just stirring around, yet also fussing and crying uncontrollably, often accompanied by a mother cooing or singing softly.  After the movie closes, we are left with the sounds of the village which can still be heard throughout the entirety of the end credits. 

Maura Delpero’s Closet Picks  Criterion selections on YouTube (3:36)