Misericordia

Misericordia feels like a big metaphysical shrug, sluggish to the point of lethargy.

The cast finesses the material without a misstep as the pent-up townsfolk orbit around cryptic, magnetic Jérémie, played by Félix Kysyl. P

The mysteries that are harbored inside of the characters may be hard to pry out at first. But look again, and you can deduce more about what lies under the surface and then consider what it says about you.

It isn’t entirely satisfying -- there are too many unfulfilled subplots and murky motivations -- but this intriguingly tricky drama has a perverse appeal.

A simmering stewpot of rural melodrama and murder that called to my mind both Patricia Highsmith and the late, great Claude Chabrol, only with a playfully mean queer subtext.

The heavily decorated Misericordia...offers a heady and murky marriage of enigmatic motivations, sexual and otherwise.

It’s impossible to know everyone’s motivations, which makes the material so engrossing, as though Guiraudie invites us to understand despite admitting that most people’s desires are wholly irrational if undeniable.

What makes “Misericordia” truly resonate is that they never overshadow its deliciously depraved story, nor dilute the finely orchestrated tension his film maintains to keep your heart pounding as you take it all in.

‘Misericordia’ has a wicked sense of humor that sneaks up on you. It’s an uneasy, pokerfaced kind of comedy that thrives on the viewer stewing in discomfort over the increasingly amoral twists.

Guiraudie's regular cinematographer, Clare Mathon, endowed Misericordia with a stifling Bergman-esque atmosphere, its murky secret places redolent of Jérémie's psyche.