Misericordia

Félix Kysyl and Jacques Develay

Alain Guiraudie's Misericordia (in France Miséricorde) is a wry and unsettling murder mystery set in the southern French countryside. The film, scripted by Guiraudie, combines an assortment of elements: a polymorphously perverse figure cons and bedazzles a small circle of patsies with his erotic allure (Teorema), a homophilic attraction and its attendant passion leads to murder (any Patricia Highsmith adaptation) resulting in a corpse being comically underfoot amidst gorgeous fall foliage (The Trouble With Harry). Guiraudie populates his film with a motley array of characters, nearly all harboring a secret or two. Most interesting are a not too grieving widow (Catherine Frot), an equivocal cleric (Jacques Develay), and a protagonist who is the object of desire for all who gaze upon him (Félix Kysyl). Misericordia is nothing earth shaking in terms of film dynamics, but I appreciated its droll aplomb. 

The film is not a whodunit, the audience witnesses the killing, but a will he get away with it.  Misericordia presents a series of mostly two handed dialogues with a constant vying for dominance between the combatants. It is the dialogues between priest and the perp that best display the range of the film, meditations on crime and punishment that limn the heights and depth of the human soul. Ultimately, the film rejects the rationalism of Cartesian dualism to celebrate the comforts of the flesh, while we can. The film's priest offer a rationalization for his moral stand, as a French priest would, but it is eros more than agape that compels him.