Anyone who has spent a little time in Europe will undoubtedly be familiar with the experience of retreating from the bustling cities and instead making their way through the small towns and villages that seem to be scattered liberally across the continent. It’s a wonderful break from the hustle and bustle of large urban centres, and is usually seen as the perfect escape from reality. However, as David Lynch famously said about small-town America (which often share qualities with these charming regions), “if one looks a little closer at this beautiful world, there are always red ants underneath”, which has come to be seen as one of the most defining statements on the nature of our relationship with these places, and how they are not always how they appear to be on the surface. Someone who has often been at the forefront of examining these ideas is Alain Guiraudie, who has made only a small handful of films, but where each is incredibly influential and important, and have developed strong followings of disciples who listen intently to the director’s scathing commentary and witness his fascinating attempts to provoke and unsettle, which is usually his primary intention. His most recent outing is Misericordia, in which we are introduced to Jérémie, a mild-mannered young man returning to the quaint hamlet of Saint-Martial, his hometown and the village where he spent much of his youth before setting out to find a more exciting life in Toulouse. His return is a sombre affair – his former boss has died, and he intends to attend his funeral. What he imagined would be only a one-day affair turns out to be a much longer stay, particularly since the deceased’s widow has a fondness for the young man, a sentiment not shared by her violent and volatile son, who makes it very clear that Jérémie’s presence is not welcome – and after a brutal confrontation, the protagonist finds himself in quite a conundrum, and one that seemingly can only be resolved with the help of the local priest, who in turn has his ulterior motives. A shocking and bitingly funny satire in which Guiraudie once again asserts himself as one of the most essential voices in contemporary cinema, Misericordia is an astonishing achievement, and a film with some very bold ideas scattered throughout.

There is something so intriguing about the subject of homecoming – its a simple concept in theory, and not one that we’d normally expect to be this layered in practice, but once we look beneath the surface, we can understand the complexities usually associated with the act of returning to the place of one’s origins. Misericordia is built on the foundation of examining a young man who momentarily returns to a place to which he holds varied emotions – he has an equal number of fond memories as he does traumatic incidents that linger with him, which makes this momentary visit all the more challenging for him. There is something so fascinating about the village in which the film takes place – we don’t learn too much about it, and Guiraudie is quite smart in how he explores the town in terms of the story, with Saint-Martial becoming something of a character of its own, a series of small, winding streets that form a working-class, pastoral labyrinth, inhabited by people who appear to be simple folk in theory, but in reality have many more secrets than their outward demeanour would suggest. Guiraudie tends to take hold of some aspect of the human condition and actively works to extract as much commentary from seemingly simple concepts, using them as the foundation for his vaguely bleak and unsettling dark comedies that are often quite uncomfortable and effortlessly brilliant. His precise inspiration for this film is not clear, and we can certainly provide our unique interpretation back on a lot of the film’s contextual cues and a range of fascinating little details that seem to be purposefully placed throughout the film, albeit not in a way that comes across as particularly logical some sub-plots and allusions prove to be narrative culs-de-sac, intentional dead-ends that lead us down a path that ultimately doesn’t contribute much to the story other than evoking a particular atmosphere. The director has a fascination with the people who reside in these small villages, and the fact that we are never able to entirely discern whether it comes from a place of affection or contempt is one of the many existential crises that this film inspires in the audience.

Misericordia is undoubtedly not a film that wants to make the experience entirely pleasant or easy to comprehend – Guiraudie has never conveyed much desire to give audiences too much information or explanation, and he actively balks at the very thought of creating something that contains very clear answers to the several provocative and perhaps even slightly bewildering questions that are asked throughout the film. Undeniably, the film is covering some very tricky subject matter – Guiraudie takes aim at pastoral life (particularly commonly-discussed them of urban and rural life and the tug-of-war that often exists between them), domestic disputes, abuse (both physical and psychological), toxic masculinity and even some allusions to the darker side of the Catholic Church, and how religion can be either stifling or liberating depending on the circumstances, and perhaps even can be used to manipulate reality in some cases. The approach taken to explore all of these intimidating ideas is quite simply to refuse to give us the answers, but lead us to a place where we can bring our interpretation. Most of Misericordia is shrouded in a thick layer of despair and hopelessness, countered by a darkly comedic sensibility – it is very much a film driven by its atmosphere more than anything else, with the long stretches of silence that persist throughout the film being haunting and hypnotic, allowing the narrative to transpire slowly through being a fascinating meditation on the core themes that propel the narrative. The blend of genres are so tightly-wound and difficult to unravel, Misericordia evades any kind of categorisation – its certainly a comedy (albeit one that is as bleak and darkly humorous as we could fathom, to the point where the act of laughing at some of these outrageous scenarios comes close to feeling like an indiscretion against the very concept of decency), and we find fascinating use of film noir, mystery, romance and psychological thriller scattered liberally throughout, giving the film an air of deep complexity and a complete incredulity towards one particular style of storytelling, which has always been something that the director have actively pursued with his narratives.

Throughout Misericordia, we are plunged deep into the lives of these characters, with the director’s vision being directly connected to the strengths of the performances, which are uniformly quite excellent. The core of the film is Félix Kysyl, a wonderful young actor who delivers his breakthrough performance as the protagonist, a seemingly ordinary man who returns to his village, and finds himself in a precarious situation when his well-maintained emotional state falls apart and he resorts to violence to resolve an easily avoidable problem, and forced to reckon with the ensuing panic when he realises the potential consequences. This is a character defined by silences, and where the more intimate moments speak the loudest, and his internal complexities tend to be the most captivating. At a glance, it’s a very subdued character, but one that is made substantially more interesting through the actor’s commitment to seeking out his various nuances. Conversely, the more eccentric performances are delivered by the supporting cast – Jean-Baptiste Durand is a memorable villain, but an even better catalyst for the core of the narrative, which is built around his very enigmatic character. However, the most interesting characters are portrayed by the two older actors – Catherine Frot is as luminescent as ever, playing the lovely widow whose peculiar relationship with the protagonist is constantly a source of discussion throughout the film, and the ambiguity of which forms the foundation for several of the film’s more challenging ideas – its not a relationship that is ever directly in focus, but rather one that lingers in the background throughout, and Frot handles the challenges of the part perfectly. The other major performance is surprisingly also another breakthrough, this time for Jacques Develay, who has remained quite obscure since becoming an actor only a few years ago, but who steals every moment he is on screen, going from a wonderfully compelling and bitingly funny supporting player to perhaps the most important character in the entire film, not necessarily in terms of his function to the plot, but rather the implications of his character and what he represents.

At its very core, Misericordia is a film that is quite difficult to describe in clear, coherent terms based on its complexity and ambiguous nature, but we can certainly try to comprehend the sheer scope of this fascinating work to the best of our abilities. It’s a darkly comical satire about revenge, the unbearable weight of the past and the philosophical questions we ask ourselves to justify our questionable choices and immoral actions, of which we are all guilty to some degree. Guiraudie is a director who understands implicitly that cinema is not supposed to make the viewer feel comfortable or at ease – he doesn’t make films that serve as cathartic experiences, and at the best of times, they’re profoundly uncomfortable and filled with existential dread and a complete lack of socio-cultural hygiene – and this is precisely what makes them so unforgettable, since we aren’t ever able to fully grasp the entirety of their themes, but instead engage with them on a deeper and more complex level. Guiraudie assembles a terrific cast, who take on the challenging nature of this material with such incredible precision, and prove to be more than capable of handling the themes, even at their most disconcerting and harrowing. Misericordia is a bitingly funny film, and the script is one of the very best of the year, filled with witty observations and haunting deconstructions of the human condition, which speak to the core themes and the characters’ interpretation of these various ideas, all of which take place in some of the most stunningly gorgeous locations in Europe, with the quaint hamlet in which the film is set being a perfect stage for this tense, disorienting dark comedy that finds humour in some of the most unexpected of places, and proves to be nothing less than an absolute triumph, and yet another example of why Guiraudie is one of our most exciting directors, with his complex vision and essential voice being the root of some of the most original and engaging films of the past two decades.