Writer-director Alain Guiraudie must surely now be said to match Quentin Dupieux for the weirdest sense of humour in French cinema. But is comedy exactly what is happening here? Because this has to be one of the strangest films of the year – or the most deadpan of deadpan in-jokes. At one point, I thought I saw the performer playing a police officer almost laugh, but perhaps every single actor here was on the verge of cracking up throughout the shoot. It could be that every time Guiraudie yelled “Cut” everyone burst out laughing.
You could also call Misericordia queer cinema, with the word “queer” also working in its non-sexual sense. Guiraudie made his international breakthrough with his 2013 film Stranger By the Lake, but it’s now clear that the seriousness and vehemence of that psychosexual drama are atypical of the director’s real instincts, which are towards waywardness and playfulness and unreadable, inscrutable mischief. And here, as sometimes in the past, he looks as if he is making it up as he goes along.
A young man called Jérémie (Félix Kysyl), comes to a small village to attend the funeral of his former employer, a baker, a man for whom he appears to have had intense feelings. The dead man’s widow, Martine (Catherine Frot), remembers her affection for this personable, sympathetic young man and he eagerly accepts her invitation to stay with her for as long as he likes – to the intense irritation of her son Vincent (Jean-Baptiste Durand), who suspects that Jérémie’s behaviour is inappropriate and that he has sexual designs on his mother. Jérémie’s actual sexual designs are – bizarrely – on slovenly and unprepossessing neighbour Walter (David Ayala), who has a penchant for Rab C Nesbitt-type vests. Vincent’s dislike for Jérémie escalates into an explosive confrontation, but Jérémie is protected by mysterious priest Philippe (Jacques Develay), who has his own emotional and sexual needs.
Perhaps this film is just too self-consciously odd, but you feel that you are watching a dream which has been minutely transcribed and re-enacted; or perhaps all the performers are sleepwalking in the most vivid and lucid way. The film is also notable for showing semi-erect penises very candidly.