Marking a welcome re-embrace of the streamlined murdery perversities of his terrific “Stranger by the Lake,” Alain Guiraudie gives the Cannes Premiere section one of its darkly sparkling standouts with the unsettlingly offbeat “Misericordia.” In the director’s best work, Guiraudie’s trademark is to infuse genre dalliances with mordant wit and a deliciously peculiar, defiant queerness. And while it may initially appear to be straightforward — and while it thankfully avoids the wild tonal swings of muddy tragicomedy “Staying Vertical” (2016) and rather baffling terrorism sex-farce “Nobody’s Hero” (2022) — nobody could ever accuse this increasingly twisted psychodrama of playing it straight.
From the start, there’s something off. The prologue is a driving sequence, shot from the point of view of the unseen driver, through the narrowing country roads of hilly southwestern France. There is nothing overtly odd going on, even the landscape is banal, shot in hazy earth tones by Claire Mathon’s clever,...
From the start, there’s something off. The prologue is a driving sequence, shot from the point of view of the unseen driver, through the narrowing country roads of hilly southwestern France. There is nothing overtly odd going on, even the landscape is banal, shot in hazy earth tones by Claire Mathon’s clever,...
- 5/27/2024
- by Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
In a career spanning four decades and eight features, Alain Guiraudie has cemented himself as one of our most astute chroniclers of desire. If there’s any leitmotif to his libidinous body of work, that’s not homosexuality (prevalent as same-sex encounters might be across his films) but a force that transcends all manner of labels and categories. His is a cinema of liberty: of vast, enchanted spaces and solitary wanderers who wrestle with their passions, and in acting them out, change the way they carry themselves into the world. Desire becomes an exercise in self-sovereignty, a way of reasserting one’s independence––a rebirth. It is often said that cinema is an inescapably scopophilic realm, where the act of looking is itself a source of pleasure, but Guiraudie has a way of making that dynamic feel egalitarian, as thrilling for those watching as it is for those being watched.
- 5/27/2024
- by Leonardo Goi
- The Film Stage
Sideshow and Janus Films have acquired the North American rights to Alain Guiraudie’s queer crime thriller “Misericordia,” starring Félix Kysyl, Catherine Frot, Jean-Baptiste Durand, Jacques Develay and David Ayala. The film was a selection of the Cannes Premiere section at this year’s festival.
The film follows Jérémie (Kysyl), a man returning to his hometown for the funeral of his former employer. After a mysterious disappearance, a priest and a townsperson make Jérémie’s short stay take an unexpected turn.
Guiraudie wrote and directed the film, produced by Charles Gillibert of CG Cinema. Janus Films and Sideshow are planning a theatrical release.
The deal was negotiated by Alice Lesort for Les Films du Losange on behalf of the filmmakers with Sideshow and Janus Films. The film is a CG Cinéma, Scala Films, Arte France Cinéma, Andergraun Films and Rosa Filmes co-production with the participation of Arte France, Ocs and Les Films du Losange.
The film follows Jérémie (Kysyl), a man returning to his hometown for the funeral of his former employer. After a mysterious disappearance, a priest and a townsperson make Jérémie’s short stay take an unexpected turn.
Guiraudie wrote and directed the film, produced by Charles Gillibert of CG Cinema. Janus Films and Sideshow are planning a theatrical release.
The deal was negotiated by Alice Lesort for Les Films du Losange on behalf of the filmmakers with Sideshow and Janus Films. The film is a CG Cinéma, Scala Films, Arte France Cinéma, Andergraun Films and Rosa Filmes co-production with the participation of Arte France, Ocs and Les Films du Losange.
- 5/24/2024
- by Selena Kuznikov
- Variety Film + TV
The Cannes crush can be so unforgiving. This year’s case in point: Misericordia has premiered to relatively little notice despite being the latest by the great Alain Guiraudie. This is no doubt owed to placing out of competition and into the festival’s “Cannes Premiere” lineup, where it debuted this week to (judging by quick Twitter searches) largely laudatory notices. Following this and, one hopes, in advance of distribution news, the first trailer has arrived.
Here’s the synopsis: “Jérémie returns to Saint-Martial for the funeral of his former boss, the village baker. He decides to stay for a few days with Martine, the man’s widow. A mysterious disappearance, a threatening neighbor and a priest with strange intentions make Jérémie’s short stay in the village take an unexpected turn…”
Find preview and poster below:
The post A Mystery Unfolds In First Trailer for Alain Guiraudie’s Cannes...
Here’s the synopsis: “Jérémie returns to Saint-Martial for the funeral of his former boss, the village baker. He decides to stay for a few days with Martine, the man’s widow. A mysterious disappearance, a threatening neighbor and a priest with strange intentions make Jérémie’s short stay in the village take an unexpected turn…”
Find preview and poster below:
The post A Mystery Unfolds In First Trailer for Alain Guiraudie’s Cannes...
- 5/21/2024
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
Revisiting the murder mysteries of his award-winning 2013 feature, Stranger by the Lake, but with a more darkly comic tone found in much of his other work, French writer-director Alain Guiraudie’s latest, Misericordia (Miséricorde), plays like two films at once: The first is a sinister, small-town homicide story in the vein of Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt, in which a man shows up to wreak havoc on the seemingly innocent. The second is a twisted variation on Pasolini’s Teorema, in which a family is torn apart by a visitor’s pervasive sexuality and refusal to leave them alone.
The two movies don’t always crystallize into one, and if you’re looking for a credible crime thriller in which everyone behaves logically, Misericordia may not be for you. If, on the other hand, you’re looking for an exploration of repressed sexual desire and religious hypocrisy in backwoods France,...
The two movies don’t always crystallize into one, and if you’re looking for a credible crime thriller in which everyone behaves logically, Misericordia may not be for you. If, on the other hand, you’re looking for an exploration of repressed sexual desire and religious hypocrisy in backwoods France,...
- 5/20/2024
- by Jordan Mintzer
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Alain Guiraudie is back at Cannes with a bittersweet and unexpectedly warmhearted dark comedy about latent homosexual desire, “Miséricorde.” Remember, the French writer/director is the filmmaker behind the 2013 perverse gay classic “Stranger by the Lake,” a simmering and sinister cruising tale about how our drives toward death and sex are of the same flesh. “Miséricorde,” debuting in the Cannes Premiere section, is a decidedly lighter-on-its-feet (in all senses of the idiom) story of a lonely and faithless man’s obsession with his dead former boss, who’s also the father of the childhood best friend he maybe once loved.
When Jérémie (Félix Kysyl) returns to Saint-Martial, a provincial village nestled in a wood in Southern France, he immediately bonds with his former boss’ widow, Martine (Catherine Frot). Is it romantic obsession, or projecting a mother figure upon her? Or is Jérémie really in love with her dead husband, and...
When Jérémie (Félix Kysyl) returns to Saint-Martial, a provincial village nestled in a wood in Southern France, he immediately bonds with his former boss’ widow, Martine (Catherine Frot). Is it romantic obsession, or projecting a mother figure upon her? Or is Jérémie really in love with her dead husband, and...
- 5/17/2024
- by Ryan Lattanzio
- Indiewire
Exclusive: Paris-based Superprod Group has acquired top Luxembourgish animation companies Studio 352 and Mélusine Productions in a move that consolidates its position as one of Europe’s leading animation production groups.
Based in Contern in Southern Luxembourg, the sister companies were founded by Belgian producer Stéphan Roelants in the late 1990s.
Mélusine Productions develops, finances and manages the projects, while Studio 352, which has built up a local team of top-level artists and technicians, executes the work.
The sister companies have been involved in some of the most important animated feature films produced out of Europe in the past 27 years.
At the same time, they have also cemented Luxembourg’s position as an animation production hub, with strong support from the Luxembourg Film Fund.
Latest credits include Neil Boyle and Kirk Hendry’s Michael Morpurgo-adaptation Kensuké’s Kingdom, which won Best Feature Film at the 2024 British Animation Awards in February.
Other...
Based in Contern in Southern Luxembourg, the sister companies were founded by Belgian producer Stéphan Roelants in the late 1990s.
Mélusine Productions develops, finances and manages the projects, while Studio 352, which has built up a local team of top-level artists and technicians, executes the work.
The sister companies have been involved in some of the most important animated feature films produced out of Europe in the past 27 years.
At the same time, they have also cemented Luxembourg’s position as an animation production hub, with strong support from the Luxembourg Film Fund.
Latest credits include Neil Boyle and Kirk Hendry’s Michael Morpurgo-adaptation Kensuké’s Kingdom, which won Best Feature Film at the 2024 British Animation Awards in February.
Other...
- 4/2/2024
- by Melanie Goodfellow
- Deadline Film + TV
Amidst the potential 2024 majors––Jia Zhangke, Olivier Assayas, Leos Carax, Arnaud Desplechin, Paul Schrader, and Kiyoshi Kurosawa but a handful––we should invest as much hope in a new film from Alain Guiraudie. Late last year we reported on his feature Miséricorde (Mercy in English), and this week CG Cinéma’s Romain Blondeau announced the commencement of shooting with Claire Mathon (his Dp on Staying Vertical and Stranger By the Lake) in tow.
Miséricorde is said to follow a noir-like plot concerning Jérémie, a 30-year-old who returns to his native Saint-Martial for a friend’s funeral. While there “he must contend with rumors and suspicion, until he commits an irreparable act and finds himself at the centre of a police investigation.” Knowing Guiraudie’s unflinching visions of violence and sexuality (not least in his superb novel Now the Night Begins), I am already girding my loins. Catherine Frot, Felix Kysyl,...
Miséricorde is said to follow a noir-like plot concerning Jérémie, a 30-year-old who returns to his native Saint-Martial for a friend’s funeral. While there “he must contend with rumors and suspicion, until he commits an irreparable act and finds himself at the centre of a police investigation.” Knowing Guiraudie’s unflinching visions of violence and sexuality (not least in his superb novel Now the Night Begins), I am already girding my loins. Catherine Frot, Felix Kysyl,...
- 11/1/2023
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
After her brother was caught up in the Bataclan siege, Winocour wanted to address the events that had scarred France. She explains why she focused on the aftermath, not the violence
Even from the safety of her home, the film-maker Alice Winocour’s experience of the Paris terror attacks in November 2015 was terrifying. Her younger brother, Jérémie, was hiding in a back room at the Bataclan concert hall, and forbade her from texting him in case it gave away his location. She had to wait to hear that he made it out alive. Later, he told her about a random thought he had while waiting to die: that he had left a half-eaten yoghurt open in the fridge. What would whoever found it make of his poor kitchen hygiene?
It is a touch of human absurdity that resurfaces in Paris Memories, her new film, about the 13 November attacks. Unlike the recent Jean Dujardin film November,...
Even from the safety of her home, the film-maker Alice Winocour’s experience of the Paris terror attacks in November 2015 was terrifying. Her younger brother, Jérémie, was hiding in a back room at the Bataclan concert hall, and forbade her from texting him in case it gave away his location. She had to wait to hear that he made it out alive. Later, he told her about a random thought he had while waiting to die: that he had left a half-eaten yoghurt open in the fridge. What would whoever found it make of his poor kitchen hygiene?
It is a touch of human absurdity that resurfaces in Paris Memories, her new film, about the 13 November attacks. Unlike the recent Jean Dujardin film November,...
- 7/28/2023
- by Phil Hoad
- The Guardian - Film News
A Canneseries and MipTV world premiere screening, Canal+ crime thriller “The Brigade” kicks off with an event that has fuelled the modern-day nightmares of France: the terrorist attacks on Bataclan.
Patrick Prigent, who heads up a Paris unit of Brigade de recherche et d’intervention (Bri), an elite police unit, receives a phone call that there is a hostage-taking situation at the nightclub. Arriving on the scene, he prepares to send in paramedics but a new Bri recruit, a guy called Saïd, advises against that. “I was Special Forces, two years in Syria. I think those guys did too. You only learn by watching others. They won’t negotiate. They know they’re going to die tonight,” says Saïd. Patrick takes in what he says.
Cut to seven years later, and Patrick is stepping down, replaced by Said as head of the unit. Leaving 90 people dead, and perpetrated by terrorists living in Europe,...
Patrick Prigent, who heads up a Paris unit of Brigade de recherche et d’intervention (Bri), an elite police unit, receives a phone call that there is a hostage-taking situation at the nightclub. Arriving on the scene, he prepares to send in paramedics but a new Bri recruit, a guy called Saïd, advises against that. “I was Special Forces, two years in Syria. I think those guys did too. You only learn by watching others. They won’t negotiate. They know they’re going to die tonight,” says Saïd. Patrick takes in what he says.
Cut to seven years later, and Patrick is stepping down, replaced by Said as head of the unit. Leaving 90 people dead, and perpetrated by terrorists living in Europe,...
- 4/17/2023
- by John Hopewell
- Variety Film + TV
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