‘Misericordia’ Review: Alain Guiraudie’s Darkly Comic Backwoods Fable of Pansexual Desire and Small-Town Sociopathy
variety.comJessica Kiang Marking a welcome re-embrace of the streamlined murdery perversities of his terrific “Stranger by the Lake,” Alain Guiraudie gives the Cannes Premiere section one of its darkly sparkling standouts with the unsettlingly offbeat “Misericordia.” In the director’s best work, Guiraudie’s trademark is to infuse genre dalliances with mordant wit and a deliciously peculiar, defiant queerness.
And while it may initially appear to be straightforward — and while it thankfully avoids the wild tonal swings of muddy tragicomedy “Staying Vertical” (2016) and rather baffling terrorism sex-farce “Nobody’s Hero” (2022) — nobody could ever accuse this increasingly twisted psychodrama of playing it straight.
From the start, there’s something off. The prologue is a driving sequence, shot from the point of view of the unseen driver, through the narrowing country roads of hilly southwestern France.
There is nothing overtly odd going on, even the landscape is banal, shot in hazy earth tones by Claire Mathon’s clever, unromanticized camera.
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