‘Misericordia’ Review: Danger Always Hides in the Bushes

After about an hour, “Misericordia” becomes an increasingly bent kind of murder mystery in which the weapon comprises sticks and stones, in which we can tell who’s lying better than the two cops on the case, in which the village abbot (Jacques Develay) proves suspiciously omnipresent, omnipresently suspicious and a touch covetous himself. The mystery is not who’s done it or even why (although as movie murders go, this one feels needless), but how this person will get away with it and who bestows the misericordia.

In about a quarter century of filmmaking, Guiraudie’s become a maestro of indirection. His films proceed according to their own logic. The movies make no psychological sense. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say that they’re completely psychological and therefore about human behavior — impulses, urges, drives, reactions — and less about people having the sex and doing the killing. So much of the action takes place outside — in the woods; even the sex — because, in Guiraudie, we’re all naked somehow, a bunch of chipmunks, weasels and owls. Spies, liars, losers, cretins and creeps: These are people who don’t know they’ve lost the plot, that they’re out of control. Would a squirrel know? The dangers in his movies differ, but intruders are everywhere. And they’re always — and I mean always — hiding in the bushes.

Protagonist ids are always disobeying or evading or being castigated by superego cops, fathers and clergymen. Yet, sometimes, the superegos have ids, too! Guiraudie is both a crasher and keeper of the gate. For here is a movie about a baker’s family and a man who works the mushroom business. Ask me how much bread we see. Ask me about the long wait to witness a morsel of food, or about how when you get one the casserole dish has been all scraped out. At some point, a character laments the declining passion for bread as though reciting Malthus. I’ve never been more impressed by a movie so willingly guided by the bulldozing of what we want and have already seen. An abbot who puts himself in the confession both? Lovelorn, lusty, lovable, lookable ogres. Rampant bisexuality that’s never also a crisis. It all feels new.

Guiraudie knows that a lot of us have seen “Stranger by the Lake” and probably want more of that — heads bobbing over torsos and sunbathers’ uncut gems, sure, but also tight, clean narrative lines; clever structure and pacing; traditional suspense, a death that breaks your heart, cogent gay politics. Maybe there’s another one of those in him, an ultimately moral oblong masterpiece. But it’s not as though he’s lost the plot. I’d say he’s interested in threatening genres and curious about how much murder he can get away with. “Misericordia” is film noir with the lights turned on. Even when its characters are working your nerves, it tickles. Guiraudie is playing those nerves like a harp.

Misericordia
Not rated. In French, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 44 minutes. In theaters.