Miséricorde / Misericordia (American premiere in the presence of Alain Guiraudie)

Alain Guiraudie: Miséricorde / Misericordia (FR/ES/PT 2024) with Félix Kysyl (Jérémie Pastor). Please do click on the photo to expand it.

Misericordia

Loc: Sauclières, Aveyron. Also Millau, Nant and Saint-Jean-du-Bruel. Plus the Dourbie gorges, the Mont Aigoual forest and Suquet ridge.
Festival premiere: 20 May 2024 Cannes.

Made possible by a donation from Elizabeth Redleaf 

Viewed at Le Pierre, Telluride Film Festival (TFF), 2 Sep 2024

In person: Alain Guiraudie, Charles Gillibert

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Les Films du Losange

Special Medallion

Dedicated to Margaret Ménégoz

Michael Barker (TFF 2024): "In 1963, the aspiring German filmmaker Barbet Schroeder, a transplant to Paris, invited his hero, Éric Rohmer, to start a production company. In the 60 years since, this lean-but-mighty independent film company has become the home to many uncompromising film artists. Its first office was in Schroeder’s mother’s house. Its first film, THE BAKERY GIRL OF MONCEAU, was directed by Rohmer and starred Schroeder. In the 1970s, they were joined by the late, formidable Margaret Ménégoz, who set the tone with impeccable taste, a tough-minded approach to making deals and by standing strong and tall to protect the visions of her uncompromising, unpredictable, and unconventional filmmakers: Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Jean Eustache, Marguerite Duras, Jean-Marie Straub, Agnieszka Holland, Andrzej Wajda, Otar Iosseliani, Moufida Tlatli, Michael Haneke, Abderrahmane Sissako, Nicolas Philibert, Mia Hansen-Løve. The films have received multiple Oscar nominations, including for Best Picture, three Palme d’Ors, two Golden Lions, one Golden Bear, nine César Awards and more than 60 international prizes. Now under the guidance of Regine Vial and Charles Gillibert, the company remains a force in international sales and film distribution, with a library of 300 of the most important titles in world cinema, from the French New Wave to Denmark’s Dogme95 to the New German Cinema. The world of movies is in a transitional phase— both as art and in commerce—and the innovative Les Films du Losange continues to offer hope for cinema’s future." –Michael Barker

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Misericordia

Bilge Ebiri (TFF 2024): "A young man (Félix Kysyl) returns home to a French provincial town for the funeral of the baker for whom he worked as a teenager. His arrival rouses the suspicions of the jealous, protective baker’s son (Jean-Baptiste Durand), the affections of the baker’s widow (Catherine Frot) and the curiosity of an odd local priest (Jacques Develay). Clearly, there are unspoken histories and desires at work here, but director Alain Guiraudie isn’t in the business of giving us conventional resolutions or explanations. Instead, he unfolds his film like a thriller, but, rather than grit and edge, MISERICORDIA proceeds with an earthy dream logic, along with Guiraudie’s characteristically playful approach to sexuality. Much as he did with 2013’s sun-drenched, unnerving queer mystery STRANGER BY THE LAKE, the director expertly mixes seemingly dissonant moods to create something all his own." –Bilge Ebiri (France-Spain-Portugal, 2024, 103 min)

AA: Alain Guiraudie's Miséricorde is a queer policier and a murky play about a young man, Jérémie (Félix Kysyl), returning to a small community in which the baker has just died. The closing of a bakery can have dramatic consequences as we know from Marcel Pagnol's La Femme du boulanger, but Guiraudie's yarn exists in quite a different sphere. The boulanger's widow is played by the irresistible Catherine Frot. She is the cordial focus of the community, in which men have lost their compass.

Jérémie wants to return to a place where he experienced a tranquil period of happiness in his turbulent teenage years. But you can't come home again. The men are morose, a child is glued to mobile apps. The film is about obscure objects of desire. Miséricorde is a bisexual story, but there are only approaches to relationships. Everything remains vague and undetermined.

As this is the 150th anniversary of Impressionism, I am struck by the Impressionist colour palette of the cinematographer Claire Mathon, recorded on location in Aveyron. Like The Trouble of Harry, Miséricorde is a film in autumn colours. Those colours are ambivalent. They shine bright and they spell death.