Misericordia [Miséricorde] **** (2024, Félix Kysyl, Catherine Frot) – Classic Movie Review 13,662

Alain Guiraudie’s 2024 French psychological thriller film Misericordia [Miséricorde] stars Félix Kysyl as Jérémie, involved with a widow (Catherine Frot), a disappearance, a threatening neighbour, a murder and a priest’s worldly attentions.

Writer/ director Alain Guiraudie’s 2024 French psychological thriller film Misericordia [Miséricorde] stars Félix Kysyl as a youngish man called Jérémie who returns to his (fictional) hometown of Saint-Martial, a picturesque French village populated by grotesques, for his former boss’s funeral. He stays for a few days with the widow Martine (Catherine Frot) but this presence enrages her son Vincent (Jean-Baptiste Durand), who thinks he wants to sleep with his mother.

[Spoiler alert] This leads to a fight between the two men that ends with Jérémie killing Vincent. He buries the body in a shallow grave in the woods, and manages to conceal his crime with the surprise help of the elderly, worldly village priest, Abbé Philippe Griseul (Jacques Develay), who provides him with an alibi in exchange for his affection.

Misericordia is a cheekily provocative, brilliantly engrossing Patricia Highsmith-style psychological thriller, with plenty of cynical darkness and some possible black comedy undertones. It is outrageously and deeply satisfyingly peculiar, wildly deranged, though Alain Guiraudie keeps it all seeming quite rational and controlled. None of this could actually happen, but somehow the film persuades you it is happening before your very surprised eyes.

The super (if vaguely menacing) performances – both Félix Kysyl and Catherine Frot are tremendous – and the glorious (if vaguely menacing) French countryside greatly aid credibility.

It won the Louis Delluc Prize for 2024 and was number one on the French film magazine Cahiers du Cinéma’s top 10 list for 2024.

It had its world premiere on 20 May 2024 at the 77th Cannes Film Festival, and was released in France on 16 October 2024 by Les Films du Losange.

It was shot in southern Aveyron from 30 October 2023 to 15 December 2023. The village of Sauclières stands in for Saint-Martial, with other shooting in the nearby villages of Millau, Nant and Saint-Jean-du-Bruel.

Claire Mathon is director of photography, having been cinematographer on Guiraudie’s Stranger by the Lake (2013).

© Derek Winnert 2025 – Classic Movie Review 13,662

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