Misericordia

A death in a small town raises some uncomfortable questions in “Misericordia,” a wryly amusing French neo-noir about obvious, slippery people. Jérémie (Félix Kysyl), a former resident of picturesque Saint-Martial, returns there after the death of his estranged mentor, a beloved local baker. Everybody wants Jérémie, but before they can admit it, they also want to know: what does Jérémie want with them and why does he choose to stick around after the funeral?

A morbid comedy of errors follows as Jérémie tries to follow his errant desires while everybody else in Saint-Martial invades his privacy and destroys his peace. Jérémie’s not exactly a victim, but it’s still very funny to watch him struggle to normalize, let alone roll with whatever new and unexpected development befalls him.

This sort of rigorously scripted, but leisurely paced neo-noir has become a specialty for writer/director Alain Guiraudie, who achieved a new level of recognition with his acclaimed 2013 Hitchcock-goes-cruising thriller “Stranger by the Lake.” Like that movie and its other successors, “Misericordia” often feels like a metaphysical, character-driven drama about the mysteries and absurdities of human attraction.

Guiraudie’s existential probing and surreal, acidic sense of humor have only grown more prominent since “Stranger by the Lake,” especially in “Nobody’s Hero,” a discomfiting 2022 farce about a hateful loner who gets involved with a sex worker and also a suspected terrorist. “Misericordia” resembles those earlier movies, which, if you’ve seen any of them, makes it easier to trust Guiraudie as he leads you along an obscure path.

Guiraudie’s characteristic focus on his characters’ and therefore his actors’ performances accounts for a good part of “Misericordia”’s elusive charm. Jérémie can also sometimes be hard to read, though his stern-looking face is usually presented in warm, patient medium close-ups. Kysyl’s bristling physicality also gets a fitting showcase as he and his cast members circle each other. Much of the plot concerns Jérémie’s involvement in a fairly major, spoiler-unfriendly incident; he spends most of the movie trying to avoid suspicion. Saint-Martial’s stereotypically nosy residents make that impossible for Jérémie as everyone tries to (literally) climb into bed with him, including the baker’s widow Martine (Catherine Frot) and the local priest Pierre (Jacques Develay).