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)

Where the Crawdads Sing

 

Director Olivia Newman

Producer Reese Witherspoon with lead cast

cinematographer Polly Morgan with Daisy Edgar-Jones

Mark and Delia Owens

Author Delia Owens

Delia Owens

Newman, Witherspoon,Edgar-Jones,Taylor John Smith, and Owens

WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING    C                                                                                     USA  (125 mi)  2022  ‘Scope  d: Olivia Newman

Sometimes I feel so invisible, I wonder if I’m here at all.                                                               —Kya (Daisy Edgar-Jones)

A cinematic interpretation of the best-selling novel by Delia Owens, topping The New York Times bestseller list for two years in a row in 2019 and 2020, making her fiction debut at the age of 70, with a script written by Lucy Alibar, who seems to have a thing for movies set in southern states, having previously written the Oscar-nominated screenplay for the southern Gothic depiction in Benh Zeitlin’s 2012 Top Ten Films of the Year: #1 Beasts of the Southern Wild, and while filmed in Louisiana, this one is set in the marshlands of North Carolina, near a fictional town called Barkley Cove.  Produced and championed by actress Reese Witherspoon, who advocates female-centric stories, gushing endlessly about how much she loves the novel, describing it as “a love letter to growing up in the South,” with the popular novel selling 22 million copies, Excerpt from Where the Crawdads Sing - Delia Owens, part coming-of-age novel and part crime drama, intertwining issues of law, race, gender, morality, and murder, but it is not without controversy, as part of author Delia Owens’ hidden past has come to light, having been involved in a real-life murder case with her now-estranged husband Mark Owens and his son Christopher.  Like the protagonist in the story, Owens had a lifelong love of nature and wildlife, having studied biology at the University of Georgia, where she met her husband Mark, receiving a degree in zoology before obtaining a doctorate in animal behavior from the University of California at Davis, both avid conservationists moving to Africa to study animals in their natural habitat, spending more than twenty years there, writing several books and articles for professional journals, yet what they really found deplorable was the rampant poaching of elephants and rhinoceroses in Zambia who were senselessly killed for illegal tusks and horns that could be sold on the black market.  Desperate to stop this bloody practice, their activism grew more militant, seeing themselves as guardians of the wildlife, instilling a white savior approach to policing the Zambian wildlife preserves, with Mark and his son conducting airborne raids against poaching camps, where they were emboldened enough to call an ABC News show Turning Point to follow them on one of their raids, with their cameras capturing footage of a suspected black African poacher who was actually shot on camera, wounded initially, followed by several more rounds coming from offscreen until he was dead, which aired in a documentary special entitled Deadly Game: The Mark and Delia Owens Story on March 30, 1996.  An in-depth investigative article was written by Jeffrey Goldberg from The New Yorker, March 29, 2010, The Hunted | The New Yorker, where he actually interviewed the cameraman, Chris Everson, who shot the TV footage, who identified Christopher as the shooter responsible for the deadly rounds.  Owens rarely discusses this matter in public, having distanced herself from the event and the participants, simply claiming she was not involved in the shooting, though she and the others are still wanted for questioning by the Zambian police, as the body has never been found, evidently dropped from a helicopter into a nearby lagoon, likely devoured by crocodiles, with all three of them leaving the country immediately afterwards and have never returned.  One of the things that stands out is that the 2018 novel echoes many of the same themes from Delia Owens’ life in Zambia, drawing on her experience of living in the wilderness, cut off from society, with eerie similarities to the murder there, while also including a pattern of perpetuating racial stereotypes.  Even the jailhouse cat whom the protagonist befriends while awaiting trial is named after a Zambian man, Sunday Justice, who once worked in the Owens’ camp as a cook.  This is simply the backdrop to the film, which became a hot topic when Taylor Swift wrote an Instagram post that she was a big fan of the book, adding eyes to the project, writing that she “wanted to create something haunting and ethereal to match this mesmerizing story,” writing a song that plays over the end credits, Taylor Swift - Carolina (From The Motion Picture “Where The ... YouTube (2:53), using mostly women in key creative positions, directed by Olivia Newman, who has a Master’s degree in film from Columbia University.

A film that screams Hallmark made-for-TV movie where women are a central focus, with parallels to the trial sequence in Robert Mulligan’s To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), while also recalling Mary Steenburgen in Martin Ritt’s CROSS CREEK (1983), a fictionalized adaptation of a trip to the back woods of Florida in the 1930’s where author Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Yearling, based in part on Rawlings’ 1942 memoir Cross Creek, yet also Andrei Konchalovsky’s SHY PEOPLE (1987), a Faulknerian story set in the back bayous of southern Louisiana.  With a production budget of $24 million, this is a story about abandonment, domestic abuse and neglect, the long-lasting impact of trauma, the power of literacy and friendship, and the wild, beautiful spaces of the marsh, where the naturalistic setting is the film’s calling card and is the dominant aspect overshadowing all else, WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING – First 10 Minutes YouTube (9:57), although it’s hard to miss a flying CGI heron in the opening sequence that transports us into the marsh, opening in 1969 with a dead body discovered at the bottom of a 63-foot tall observational fire tower, with the police attempting to discover if the victim was intentionally pushed or whether it was accidental.  “A swamp knows all about death, and doesn’t necessarily define it as tragedy, certainly not a sin.”  Moving back and forth between different periods, with the changing timelines shown on the screen, another flashback to the early 1950’s reveals a backwoods family living along a pristine marsh with an alcoholic and abusive father, whose violence against his wife and kids drives them away from the home one by one, leaving ten-year old Kya Clark (Jojo Regina) alone after her father leaves, creating a series of improbable events, where she is forced to raise herself in that isolated swamp accessible only by boat traffic, with no electricity or running water.  Kya is the lead protagonist, much like Delia Owens, a naturalist and loner, shunned by the neighboring town and community, who view her only with derision and contempt, disdainfully referred to as the “Marsh girl,” mocked for her poverty and ridiculed out of school on her very first day, leaving her unable to read or write as she grows up, instead she spends her time observing and drawing the natural wildlife, especially the birds, developing an extraordinary artistic talent, where her shack is lined with these watercolors.  She is also a curious collector of feathers, shells, leaves, flowers, and other wild things, assembling quite a collection, where her home becomes a repository of these discovered items, like a “glass menagerie.”  Her only friends in town are a black couple running a general store, Mabel and Jumpin’ Madison, (Charlene Michael Hyatt and Sterling Macer Jr.), who assume the role of guardians once all her family has left, the only ones really looking out for her, and she survives by selling them mussels.  Based on her outsider status, ostracized and reviled by the community, where she pretty much just keeps to herself, she is the likely suspect in the opening murder, with the police arresting her, building a case solely on circumstantial evidence, yet her name is dragged through the mud all over town, where the only townsperson willing to look through the glaring wall of prejudice is retired attorney Tom Milton (David Strathairn).  There is a stark contrast between the purity of innocence that Kya represents, completely immersed in the world of the marsh, befriending the wildlife, her one and only real friend, where her moral compass, social expectations, and concept of justice are shaped by observing the natural world, while the real dangers and threats come from the contaminating influences of town.  Where most individuals would struggle with isolation and self-preservation, Kya learned to thrive, enjoying every tiny aspect of nature, learning that everything is interconnected, all in harmony with the elements.  Once she’s older, blossoming into British actress Daisy Edgar-Jones, requiring a dialect coach to learn a southern accent, she eloquently narrates the story through a series of continuing voiceovers, adding a literary aspect along with wisdom beyond her years, and a perspective that is all her own, something of a wild child, yet restrained and self-reflective, never looking dirty or unkempt, with no sign whatsoever of bugs or mosquitoes out in the marsh, which is a bit of a mystery, seemingly impossible, so viewers are equally transported into a world of make-believe, which is sumptuously shot in ‘Scope by Polly Morgan, with music by Mychael Danna.

Equally improbable is a series of two drastically different love interests, neither one fully fleshed out, feeling more like movie characters, expressed through flashback sequences as Kya languishes in prison awaiting her trial, as Kya is befriended by Tate Walker (Taylor John Smith), having run into him throughout her childhood fishing in the marsh, finally meeting him out in the woods, lured by feathers left behind on an old tree stump, both sharing a common interest in nature, but he’s about to head off to college to study biology, but before he does he lends her books and teaches her to read and write, even writing down names of publishers that she can send her drawings off to for a possible book, providing another potential source of income.  Both seem inseparable, but his father warns him that rumors about them could jeopardize his future.  He heads off early for a job working in the biology lab, but promises to return on the 4th of July, asking her to meet him, but when the night arrives he’s a no show, leaving her utterly devastated, Where the Crawdads Sing (2022) - Tate Doesn't Come Back ... YouTube (3:09), where her many years of loneliness only accentuate the excruciating feeling of loss, “Being alone is a pain whose vastness is so great you can hear echoes.”  Miraculously, one of the publishers comes through, enthusiastically supporting her work, where the money she earns actually allows her to buy up all the land around the property, ensuring that it’s not stolen out from under her by developers, who are planning luxury condos out in the marsh.  Years later she begins a relationship with Chase Andrews, played by Harris Dickinson from Eliza Hittman’s Beach Rats (2017) and Ruben Östlund’s Triangle of Sadness (Sans Filtre) (2022), a pompous and promiscuous football star who is something of a charmer and sweet talker, used to getting everything he wants, and he wants Kya.  While viewers can spot a cad immediately, Kya is not so worldly, and is more easily ensnared, with next to nothing known about this man, often taking her feelings for granted for his own sexual pleasure, where he seems to manipulate her at every turn, even making plans for marriage without even asking her, but he does find a rare shell that she makes into a necklace and gives back to him, which he never takes off, but the real kicker happens when she sees him in town with another girl who’s engaged to be his wife.  This deception hits like a ton of bricks, where she really doesn’t want to have anything more to do with him, but he doesn’t take no for an answer, drunkenly having his way with her, punching her in the face and forcing himself on her, violently raping her, where she has to beat him in the head with a rock to get him off of her.  She had seen this violent behavior before with her father, “One thing I learned from Pa, these men must have the last punch,” where destruction is a way of punctuating their pent-up rage and anger, as he ends up trashing her home, with destroyed drawings strewn all over the place.  Shortly afterwards she is arrested for his murder, though she was in another town visiting with her publishers for the first time face to face, celebrating yet another published book, but the prosecutor believes she could conceivably have disguised herself while taking a night bus back to Barkley Cove and back again with none of the publishers noticing her absence.  Nonetheless, it’s a disturbing time, turning into an extended trial sequence, where the victim is none other than Chase Andrews (Owens’ version of a poacher), a local big shot, as his parents are loaded with money, where it’s their influence that is driving the trial, literally demanding her conviction after that necklace he was wearing goes missing at the time of his death, suggesting only Kya would have any real interest.  The direction of this film is simply unremarkable, with problematic characters, as Kya is overly saccharine and sweet, even saintly, while the men in her life are predictably one-dimensional, and the supporting characters in town couldn’t be more diabolically stereotypical, with the entire town literally sneering at this girl, treating her with nothing but contempt, preferring to believe she’s an inferior uncivilized being out in the marsh, where they don’t begin to understand or appreciate who she really is, much more intelligent and morally complex than they give her credit for.  It’s something of a sentimentalized mystery movie, where small-town prejudice is a prevailing theme, but despite a reverence for nature, with wild creatures doing what they need to do in order to survive, it’s a tepid, overly sanitized and simplistic rendering that is never fully believable.