Cinema Releases - Misericordia

“Marking a welcome re-embrace of the streamlined murdery perversities of his terrific “Stranger by the Lake,” Alain Guiraudie gives the Cannes Premiere section one of its darkly sparkling standouts with the unsettlingly offbeat “Misericordia.” In the director’s best work, Guiraudie’s trademark is to infuse genre dalliances with mordant wit and a deliciously peculiar, defiant queerness. And while it may initially appear to be straightforward…nobody could ever accuse this increasingly twisted psychodrama of playing it straight.”

Jessica Kiang, Variety

“Guiraudie has crafted another elegantly haunting dissection of the power dynamics shaping queer sexuality, this time in the form of an fantastically tender, alluring, and peculiar small-town tale of murder, desire, and repression.”

Isaac Feldburg, RogerEbert.com

"Like for his other films — eight features and nearly as many shorts — the director creates his own unique tone, combining stark naturalistic performances reminiscent of Robert Bresson with the macabre humour and underlying suspense of Hitchcock. Talented cinematographer Claire Mathon (Portrait of a Lady on Fire) captures that mood in a series of gloomy, rain-soaked set pieces in which the sun never comes out once."

Jordan Mintzner, The Hollywood Reporter

"That equanimity is a hallmark of the director’s artistry, and the reason why his films feel authentic in a way so many others do not. Guiraudie’s drifters––a pantheon that groups together traditionally “attractive” young people and more corpulent, older figures––are never the urban-chic types that have become a staple of much commercial and arthouse French cinema. Set worlds away from Paris, most of them in that rural corner of southern France where he grew up, his works pullulate with folks who share a near-molecular relationship with the places they inhabit. Which is to say that forests, lakes, and hills never operate as simple backgrounds, but in the same way landscapes do in Romantic paintings: as extensions of the characters’ inner lives, canvases that reflect and refract their tempestuous emotions."

Leonardo Goi, The Film Stage

"The film’s title sounds more esoteric than it actually is; “Miséricorde” is merely French for “mercy.” The filmmakers have instead opted for the identical Latin word for mercy, “Misericordia,” as the international title, which is more fitting. Guiraudie’s concept of mercy is tied to tolerance of all human behavior, and it has expanded to its furthest reaches, even including criminality. Guiraudie sits beyond all judgment, beyond morality, and is a true radical as a humanism absolutist. He makes us contemplate the world as described by the famous aphorism at the heart of Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov—if god does not exist, then everything is permitted."

Ankit Jhunjhunwala, The Playlist

"Misericordia is a film that manages to have fun with itself while still presenting provocative questions about life, death, love and guilt. Writer and director Alain Guiraudie’s handle on tone within this piece is unlike anything I have ever witnessed before. With pitch-perfect performances from a knockout cast to a truly singular story, Misericordia is a one-of-one film that you have to see to believe"

Hayley Croke, Loud and Clear

"The films of French writer-director Alain Guiraudie can be dark (killer-at-a-cruising-ground drama Stranger By The Lake). They can be comic (his last film, terrorism-anxiety comedy Nobody’s Hero). Or they can be flat-out bizarre (quest fantasy No Rest for the Brave). But some things are absolutely consistent: a testing of the conventions of fiction, a focus on the lawless vagaries of desire, and a playfully left-field sensibility that is uniquely Guiraudie’s. Misericordia, playing in the Cannes Premiere sidebar, initially seems to promise a low-key, straight-down-the-line French rural melodrama. But then it takes a few confounding thriller detours before showing its hand as a philosophical (and even somewhat theological) disquisition on guilt, redemption and the necessity of transgression in a messed-up world."

Jonathan Romney, Screen International

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Interview with Alain Guiraudie by Beatrice Loayza in Mubi Notebook