“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.”
—Wesley Morris, New York Times (Critic’s Pick)

“Fundamentally, a snappy and satisfying entertainment, a thriller that thrills. The plot is tight yet full of surprises, the story is logical yet wide-ranging, and it pings and sparks with nuances of behavior and character, with psychological implications and piquant observations. Its thrills owe as much to its aesthetic as to its story.”
—Richard Brody, The New Yorker

The teasingly entwined ambiguities of love and death continue to fascinate Alain Guiraudie (STRANGER BY THE LAKE), who returns with a sharp, sinister, yet slyly funny thriller.

Set in an autumnal, woodsy village in his native region of Occitanie, his latest follows the meandering exploits of Jérémie (Félix Kysyl), an out-of-work baker who has drifted back to his hometown after the death of his beloved former boss, a bakery owner. Staying long after the funeral, the seemingly benign Jérémie begins to casually insinuate himself into his mentor’s family, including his kind-hearted widow (Catherine Frot) and venomously angry son (Jean-Baptiste Durand), while making an increasingly surprising—and ultimately beneficial—friendship with an oddly cheerful local priest (Jacques Develay).

In Guiraudie’s quietly carnal world, violence and eroticism explode with little anticipation, and criminal behavior can seem like a natural extension of physical desire. The French director is at the top of his game in MISERICORDIA, again upending all genre expectations.