This Tuesday, May 19, at 7 p.m., the Alliance Française in Asunción (Mcal. Estigarribia 1039) screens Miséricorde (2024), the eighth feature film by French director Alain Guiraudie. The screening is part of the Special Cycle of the Cannes Film Festival and will be presented in French with Spanish subtitles.
The film follows Jérémie (Félix Kysyl), a young man who returns to the isolated commune of Saint-Martial in the Aveyron region for the funeral of his former boss, the local baker. While staying at the home of the widow Martine (Catherine Frot), he triggers a web of latent hostilities, repressed desires, and collective suspicions. Mourning quickly turns into a game of manipulations of high moral ambiguity, where homoerotic and heteroerotic impulses intertwine with the imminence of death.
Guiraudie, born in 1964, is known for works such as Stranger by the Lake (2013), which already explored non-heteronormative desire in natural spaces and the deconstruction of moral boundaries. In Miséricorde, presented in the Cannes Première section, he transfers these tensions to the microcosm of contemporary rural life, creating an oppressive atmosphere but permeated by subtle irony.
International critics highlighted the performances of Kysyl and Frot, as well as the script's ability to address Catholic guilt, social hypocrisy, and community isolation without moralistic concessions. The work is seen as a mature evolution in Guiraudie's filmography, consolidating him as a master of genre hybridizations in auteur cinema.
The initiative is supported by the French Embassy in Paraguay and sponsored by Banco Sudameris. Tickets can be purchased at the venue before the screening.