‘Stranger by the Lake’ Director Alain Guiraudie’s Must-See ‘Misericordia’ Set for March U.S. Release

If you’ve never known what it’s like to be the only hot person in a small town, Alain Guiraudie’s “Misericordia” is here to show you just that, in all its darkly comic anguish.

The “Stranger by the Lake” director’s latest film, which premiered at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival before touring Telluride, Toronto, and New York, will open in select theaters on March 21. IndieWire exclusively announces the film’s release from Sideshow and Janus Films here. “Misericordia” finds Guiraudie returning to the land of queer desire, though this time with Jérémie (Félix Kysyl) coming back to his hometown to mourn the death of his former boss. Whom he may have been in love with.

A national rollout will kickoff after the film opens at IFC Center and Film at Lincoln Center in New York and the Landmark’s Nuart Theatre.

While back in his hometown of Saint-Martial in rural France, 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 said 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.

“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 of his new film “Misericordia.” “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.”

“Misericordia” is a twisted and sordidly funny film not to be missed this spring. Sideshow and Janus have recently brought films like director Gints Zilbalodis’ animated delight “Flow,” from Latvia, and Payal Kapadia’s “All We Imagine as Light,” from India, to Oscar contention and solid arthouse box office. Look out for “Misericordia” in select theaters on March 21.

Ari Aster, Radu Jude, Payal Kapadia, and Miguel Gomes have all praised the film. 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.”