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)

Stranger By the Lake (L'inconnu du lac)

STRANGER BY THE LAKE (L'inconnu du lac)      B+       
France  (97 mi)  2013  ‘Scope  d:  Alain Guiraudie        Website            Trailer

A sexually explicit film that might qualify as porn noir, where if there is an insatiable public appetite for watching gay sex onscreen, this is the film of choice, as the salacious titillation is just the preliminary course, so to speak, only part of what evolves into a modernist existential thriller, one that evokes a darkening mood of murder and enveloping danger.  What’s immediately apparent is the meticulous precision of the film, which gives pause for reflection, as it does exhibit a rare intelligence, but the overly detached, deeply repressive territory may be too subtle for most viewers, as this minimalist, near Bressonian exercise offers few clues as an intricately probing psychological thriller.  What it does do is perfectly capture an enclosed space, a restricted territory, a perfectly secluded summer lake that becomes a haven for gay men to lie around naked on the beach, occasionally swimming, before pairing off in the nearby woods for actual unsimulated sex, where the director confines his camera to the same few locations, never once leaving the beach surroundings, becoming stiflingly claustrophobic, and eventually suffocating.  The film’s structure is built upon a carefully designed monotony of surface detail, where the rhythm is established through a series of repetitive routines, where the audience gets lulled to sleep by the familiarity, as each new day begins with the exact same camera shot of an approaching car searching for a spot to park in the small lot, then there’s a short walk through the woods to the beach where unadorned figures are seen sporadically lying about sun-bathing nude, as friends politely acknowledge one another with kisses to the cheek as they arrive.  While there’s an interesting geometry to the way bodies remain at a careful distance from one another, perhaps more intriguing is the realization that this view of the beach can’t be shot from anywhere except the middle of the lake, which becomes a disturbing point of view as the film unravels.  The characteristic long shots and extended takes from cinematographer Claire Mathon are reminiscent of Michael Haneke’s CACHÉ (2005), which invite the viewer to focus their attention on anything out of place and on carefully placed details.

The film is seen through the eyes of Franck (Pierre Deladonchamps), a twentysomething who is a regular at the beach, where we follow his vantage point even as he is swimming in the water, where his surveillance of the shoreline reveals a man sitting off to the side away from the others, Henri (Patrick d’Assumçao), a somewhat chubby but congenial outsider who remains clothed and never goes into the water, striking up an easygoing friendship, chatting each day until someone more desirous arrives.  Henri is a recent widower, a reported bisexual who remains a picture of loneliness and solitude, never venturing to the cruising section of the beach, never talking to anyone except Franck, but often comments on gay behavior.  Since there are so few doors into this enclosed culture, his insights are particularly welcome, even when offered so casually, as they offer a window into this tightly constricted universe.  Franck’s sexual interest perks up with the arrival of Michel (Christophe Paou), sort of a cross between Mark Spitz and Harry Reems, a muscular swimmer with a perfect physique, where everything about him is desirable, except he has a needy partner, with whom he disappears after a brief exchange.  Later that evening, however, when Franck is alone in the woods overlooking the tranquil lake, he watches Michel drown his partner before swimming ashore.  Despite the continuing presence of the murdered man’s car in the lot and his beach towel and clothes on the beach, Franck remains silent about what he saw while entering into a furiously passionate, sexual affair with the killer, as if the murder was an aphrodisiac to his senses.  As the relationship deepens, Franck attempts to expand it beyond the confines of the beach, but Michel continually rejects the notion, insisting his private life remain private.  When the body washes ashore and the police begin asking questions, Franck is surprised when Michel shows no discomfort whatsoever over the loss of his partner.

Much like Henri, the Police Inspector (Jérôme Chappatte) offers curious insight into this secretive community, becoming a commentary on sad and empty lives that mechanically have sexual experiences with no lasting value, often without sharing names, as almost immediately, they’re in need of sexual replenishment, routinely changing partners.  The film bears an uncanny resemblance to Éric Rohmer’s A SUMMER’S TALE (Conte d'été) 1996, especially the idyllic seaside location searching for love, becoming a summertime flirtation without the sexual explicitness, but featuring characters who are unable to make commitments and are constantly avoiding emotional connections.  In this secluded spot on a picturesque lake, there is no real love or commitment, but an anonymous game of musical chairs, where man is often seen as a hunter surviving on animal instincts, searching out sexual conquests or liaisons, yet remaining imprisoned by the existential nature of remaining isolated and alone.  Aware of the potential danger, or more likely excited by it, Franck ignores the advice of his friend Henri and indulges his passion, where an alarm bell goes off when Michel invites him into the water to go swimming, which all of a sudden exudes a sense of overwhelming danger.  In the water, Michel is the alpha male, where all others must submit to his dominating physical prowess, becoming an object of obsession in Franck’s eyes, who still remains hopelessly drawn to him.  It’s impossible to understand what possible self-justifying logic Franck uses where he’s willing to risk death for a love he barely understands and instead feels controlled by, veering into the psychological void of amorality, questioning the limits of illicit sexual desire and the eroticism inherent in dangerous situations.  The film appears heavily influenced by French writer/philosopher George Bataille, author of Christophe Honoré’s MA MÈRE (2004), a transgressive work that equates base sexuality with the divine, where transcendence is achieved only through indulgence.  Elaborating on a Sartrian No Exit theme, Guiraudie may be drawing upon a gay preoccupation with self loathing, failing to live up to “straight” society’s conception of beauty and sex, and in pursuit of an ever elusive perfect erotic desire, may equate sexuality with a drive towards death (including anal sex without condoms), where in perhaps the scene of the film, Franck joins Michel *in* the lake at the scene of the crime, at the exact same evening hour when no one else is around.  What happens afterwards only punctuates the intrusive presence of blackness that has pervaded Franck’s desirous soul, like an otherworldly presence, forced to live in the self-imposed blindness of a murky void, where the director offers no comfort that there is any way out.