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)

The Loveless

 

Director Kathryn Bigelow

Willem Dafoe

Tina L’Hotsky

Robert Gordon

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE LOVELESS             B                                                                                                    USA  (85 mi)  1981  d: Kathryn Bigelow and Monty Montgomery

Man, I was what you call... ragged.  I mean, way beyond torn up.  I wasn’t gonna be no man’s friend today.  Been out of storage for about a year now.  And to me, this endless blacktop is my sweet eternity.  I knew I was going to hell in a breadbasket.                                                          —Vance (Willem Dafoe), opening narrative voiceover

This is the kind of thing that is emblematic of American films, easily transportable around the globe, given a distinctive look that oozes with rebellion on the open road, a postmodern neo-biker flick inspired by Kenneth Anger’s SCORPIO RISING (1963), using a teenage genre that America has been exploiting since the 1950’s, low on plot, heavy on atmosphere, one of the inspirations behind Jeff Nichols’ The Bikeriders (2024), exuding a certain retro charm that can at the same time be both aloof and tantalizing.  Like a revised western where a lone gunman strolls into town, with everything going haywire afterwards, a motorcycle gang heading for the Daytona motorcycle races pulls into a small Southern town, where there is a cultural and generational divide that pits a racist, abusive, and corrupt society at war with itself, with marginal female characters having a position of prominence here, carrying the weight of the world on their shoulders, though they are typically omitted from male-dominated westerns or the biker genre.  Bigelow initially studied painting at the San Francisco Art Institute and received her BFA degree in 1972, but then moved to New York City after winning a scholarship to attend the prestigious Independent Study Program at the Whitney Museum of Art, tutored by Susan Sontag and Richard Serra, developing an interest in New York’s avant-garde art scene in the 70’s, but she changed her focus to film, indicating “My movement from painting to film was a very conscious one.  Whereas painting is a more rarefied art form, with a limited audience, I recognized film as this extraordinary social tool that could reach tremendous numbers of people.”  Bigelow transferred to Columbia University’s Master of Fine Arts program to study film theory and criticism under Milos Forman and Peter Wollen, among others, graduating in 1979.  In her early films, Bigelow explored genres and expanded her skills, making her first full-length feature with fellow Columbia film school student Monty Montgomery, who was in film production, perhaps best known for playing the Cowboy in David Lynch’s MULHOLLAND DRIVE (2001), while also producing several of his works.  Co-writing and co-directing with Montgomery, though the vision is largely Bigelow’s (as evidenced by her succession of films, while this is Montgomery’s only directing effort), drawing characters that only live in a cerebral context, where even today this may largely be viewed as an academic exercise, though The Loveless is apparently the favorite film of Cuban screenwriter and novelist Guillermo Cabrera Infante.  Bigelow turned to Willem Dafoe in his first feature screen performance, who came out of The Wooster Group, a New York City-based experimental theater company, becoming a star-making venture, with violence and repressed sexuality simmering at the edge of every frame, exploring the line between subconscious realms and reality, while cinematographer Doyle Smith provided the lurid imagery.  Shot in just 22 days on a streamline budget, fitting somewhere between arthouse and B-movie grindhouse, this low-budget film garnered a cult following that toured for years on the underground circuit with David Lynch’s ERASERHEAD (1977), becoming a stepping stone for Bigelow’s vampire love story set in the American West, NEAR DARK (1987), as well as her sci-fi New Year’s Eve thriller Strange Days (1995).  Bigelow is the first woman director to win an Academy Award for Best Director with The Hurt Locker (2008), and one of the few women in mainstream cinema with an academic background in film theory.

Set in 1950’s America, this is a visually stylish, leather-clad motorcycle movie that’s completely conceptual, an homage to biker flicks of the 50’s and 60’s, with a reverence for Brando’s THE WILD ONE (1953) that sets a tone of outsiderism, bringing Bigelow’s experience in the visual arts to striking cinematic effect, bringing a painterly eye for detail, as she had not yet embraced the concept of a narrative at that point, which was completely antithetical to anything in the art world, so this film defiantly rejects it, creating the illusion of a story that’s barely there, with one foot in the art world and another in cinema.   Offering a skewed perspective that feels overly distant and abstract, there is leisurely pacing as well with long, lingering shots, immersed in an atmospheric ennui, remaining on the outside of whatever transpires, with fragmented exposition of both the dialogue and the performances.  Providing a meditative snapshot of a group of bikers passing through a quintessential 50’s small town America, there is a prevalent use of largely primitive rock ‘n’ roll music, where the extensive jukebox scoring makes viewers think of Aki Kaurismäki, which this in many ways amusingly resembles, with large periods of no dialogue, and hardly any natural sound, replaced by an assemblage of rockabilly music scored by Robert Gordon, including the selection of songs, while he also portrays one of the bikers, with other music provided by brothers John and Evan Lurie of The Lounge Lizards, but then this film takes off in an entirely different and often disjointed direction.  With Relentless by Eddie Dixon playing over the opening credits, Relentless (Title Theme from The Loveless) - Eddie Dixon YouTube (2:50), a sauntering guitar riff with exaggerated reverb and a walking bassline introduces viewers to Vance (Willem Dafoe) as he sits atop his bike in the middle of an isolated desert.  But the music comes to an abrupt halt with preening gestures for an audience as he combs his hair, tightens his belt buckle, and kickstarts his bike, with the music picking right back up again as he drives down the highway, with a voiceover establishing his state of mind, where the fusion of rebellious music with a biker attitude sets the scene, leading to an opening car repair interlude as he stops for a lone woman (Jane Berman) in a car stopped along the roadway with a flat tire, where there’s a raw energy of unease and sexual tension, with plenty of suggestions about what lies under the surface, Car Repairing Scene - The Loveless (1981) YouTube (5:18).  Despite his arrogant swagger, he is polite and changes her tire, but then steals a kiss and her money while aggressively groping her before he departs, where Bigelow understands the darkness and the danger that bubbles under the surface and has had a fascinating interest in both masculinity and violence since the beginning of her career.  Bigelow has worked in various genres from thrillers, horror movies, westerns, science fiction, a road movie, a cop film, big budget action pictures, and war stories, with most of her films concerned with male protagonists, where she’s demonstrated time and again that she’s not afraid of making films that appeal primarily to men, yet there’s no denying the homoerotic undertones that also exist in this film.  While there is a level of provocation in nearly all her films, most of them portray violence that can be shocking, yet the dreaded anticipation of that release carries even greater dramatic force.

The bikers converge on a local diner, arriving separately, including Davis (Robert Gordon) and his vampish girlfriend Sportster Debbie (Tina L’Hotsky), La Ville (Lawrence Matarese), the youngest member of the gang Ricky (Danny Rosen), and Hurley (Phillip Kimbrough), whose Harley motorcycle broke a chain, so they intend to stick around to get it fixed, locating a nearby garage.  But nothing happens in this neck of the woods, so time is suspended as the locals and the out-of-towners size each other up, with each developing their own suspicious views of what they see, where there’s a seething hostility about the unruly appearance of this riff raff that is tainted with extreme prejudice, fanning the flames of potential violence, evoking the ending of Dennis Hopper’s EASY RIDER (1969), Easy Rider 1969 End YouTube (5:23).  This uneasy alliance forms the basis of what there is for drama, that is, until the arrival of Telena (Marin Kanter) in her red Corvette convertible pulling into the service station for gas.  Cue Vance’s theme music by Eddie Dixon, and the sparks quickly fly with her incendiary sexual appeal, where she looks about fifteen (or younger, though she was 21 at the time) with her pixie haircut, brash attitude, and not a trace of makeup, where her startling revelations are told in such a brutally honest and understated manner.  A relationship begins with an abstract conversation between two outsider characters who are drawn together and trying to understand one another, until they are torn apart by the ensuing violence.  While we expect a violent confrontation, it takes a while to get there, taking an unexpected twist when she reveals the sordid secrets of her dysfunctional family relationship with a mother who committed suicide in front of her and an overly violent, sexually abusive father Tarver (J. Don Ferguson) who hates anyone coming between him and his daughter, which leaves an impression on this seemingly carefree motorcycle gang leader.  The edge that Talena brings literally drives the story, actually becoming more about her, providing an entirely sympathetic portrayal of Telena’s oppressive circumstances, revealing internal knowledge about a horrific woman’s experience, yet told within the parameters of a male biker genre, which is completely unexpected, yet it provides a backdrop for a sickly maladjusted patriarchy at the heart of the American experience that continues to this day.  One thing leads to another and they end up having sex at a roadside motel, only to be interrupted by her father with a shotgun, where she screams, “Daddy he ain’t done nothing to me you haven’t done to me a hundred times before.”  What initially seems simple suddenly turns incredibly complicated, especially after she bares her private anguish, where her honesty is quite simply stunning and emotionally jarring, as he suddenly realizes both the benefits and the downside of his attraction to someone who is potentially so dangerous.  In both of Bigelow’s first two films, there is a subtext about how people are attracted to each other at first, evolving slowly, and then abruptly ends, causing a violent disconnection, which leads the audience to ask deeper questions about their relationship, and how they react to an emotionally dark situation.  Deeper into the night it gets more surreal as the dirty little secrets of this town unravel in a roadside bar, where the customers turn discomfortingly explosive in a raucous bar scene that spins out of control, as this group of outsiders serves as a catalyst to a social implosion from the seething anger and resentment that already exists in this backwater town.  The disempowerment of women is painfully illuminated, and in the aftermath of the ensuing chaos we see Vance staring off into the void as his sex, drink, and rock ‘n’ roll-filled existence is shattered as he hears an earlier scene repeatedly play out in his head, which deepens his character, allowing the audience to hear his internal dialogue and share a private moment with him.  This side of his character is not typically part of a gang leader’s personality, evoking a bond of sympathy with the audience, yet there’s an unreadable aspect to who he is, distinctive yet understated, where we are both enticed and repulsed by what we see, with Vance becoming the template for future Bigelow films.  Through aesthetics and subversion, this is a contemplative, nihilistic, and deviant film that screams individuality, with Vance narrating his final existential thoughts on an endless road trip to nowhere, “Every one of us dollar chips in one big floating crap game.”