‘Misericordia’ Trailer: ‘Stranger by the Lake’ Director Alain Guiraudie Goes on Another Lusty Journey of the Queer Soul

“Stranger by the Lake” director Alain Guiraudie is back with another unsettling queer exploration, this time with 2024 Cannes premiere “Misericordia.” Here, Jérémie (Félix Kysyl) comes back to his hometown in rural France to mourn the death of his former boss. Who he also might have been in love with. It’s complicated, but if you’ve never known what it’s like to be the only hot person in a small town, Jérémie’s arrival makes the case that it’s less than desirable, and even dangerous. Especially as the townspeople, including a local bishop, start feasting on him.

The film opens in select theaters from Sideshow and Janus Films on March 21, with Guiraudie traveling to the U.S. for Q&As. IndieWire shares the trailer exclusively below.

Returning to Saint-Martial, Jérémie stays longer than one should, reconnecting with his boss’ now-widowed wife, and his childhood best friend Vincent (Jean-Baptiste Durand). Vincent is the son of said widow, Martine (Catherine Frot), and past jealousies resurface, leading to possible murder, as Jérémie wears out his welcome with the group. Jérémie attaches himself to a local bishop (Jacques Develay) in the process, sending everyone, including the village priest, into a psychosexual frenzy.

As Guiraudie told IndieWire back at Cannes 2024, “Misericordia” is his “first film without an explicit lovemaking scene in a long time.” That’s certainly something from the director of 2013’s “Stranger by the Lake,” where an affair between a handsome, sullen cruiser and a mustachioed potential killer turned into one of the sexiest, deadliest, and most explicit films of the 21st century so far. Like “Stranger by the Lake,” Guiraudie relies on his Hitchcockian arsenal of moral ambiguity and quick-witted cuts surrounding a queer man’s destructive presence.

After “Stranger by the Lake,” Guiraudie also wrote and directed “Staying Vertical” and “Nobody’s Hero,” but “Misericordia” brings him back to his main interest: queer desire.

“At the age of 60 — well, I’m not quite 60, but nearly — I’d like to say that this film was sort of made on the strength of what I would call teenage fantasies,” Guiraudie said via translator. “Well, the idea of falling in love with the mother of one’s best friend or the father of one’s best friend. You have this whole image of desire and eroticism as it is linked to religion based from childhood or teenagehood.”

Here’s a more detailed synopsis: “In ‘Misericordia,’ the entwined ambiguities of love and death haunt 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. Staying long after the funeral, the seemingly benign Jérémie begins to casually insinuate himself into his late mentor’s family. He lives with the kind-hearted widow (Catherine Frot) and is stalked by the venomously jealous son (Jean-Baptiste Durand), while building a strange yet meaningful friendship with a pragmatic local priest (Jacques Develay). Before long, small-town pleasantries are tangled into a web of violent criminal behavior and erotic physical desire.”