A Conversation with Alain Guiraudie (MISERICORDIA)

The less you know, the better. A young man travels from Toulouse to his (fictional) hometown of Saint-Martial to attend the funeral of his former boss, a fondly appreciated baker in the neighbourhood. His widow invites the estranged man to stay for the evening and that night gradually becomes a few days. This arrangement, however, angers her son. His presence disrupts the filament that loosely binds the entire town.

If you have any familiarity with writer / director Alain Guiraudie’s L’Inconnu du lac [Stranger by the Lake] (or his subsequent Rester vertical [Staying Vertical] or Viens je t’emmène [Nobody’s Hero]), nothing is quite as it seems. This inverted take on Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s The Visit finds its perpetual methods to create tension around a daily stroll in the woods searching for morels. Less Shadow of a Doubt, more The Trouble with Harry. [Furthermore, less Diary of a Country Priest, more The Devil, Probably.]

Arguably, Misericordia is the finest feature-length released into cinemas in the U.S. (on behalf of Sideshow and Janus Films, the theatrical-exhibition arm of the Criterion Collection) during the first-half of 2025 (and, undoubtedly, one of the greatest and most pleasurably confounding films to debut at festivals in 2024). Like any great film, it benefits from seeing it in a cinema, where its subtle pacing can best be appreciated without distraction and in which its exceptional imagery of a rural town bathed in persistent twilight (from the cinematographer of the equal stunning Petite Maman and Portrait de la jeune fille en feu [ Portrait of a Lady on Fire]) one can be fully immersed.

Alain Guiraudie: You’ve seen the film?

Hammer to Nail: I have (and others, yes)! This moment would be awkward if I hadn’t. One of the things that I always find remarkable about your work is the constrained nature of the narrative. How you allow or encourage audiences to infer certain details. You do not go out of your way to overly explain the backstories of your characters. You allow those elements to surface through conversations between these characters. I am immensely curious about your process, while you are writing and then casting and, later, filming.

AG: The scenario. How do I say this? The way that I approach filmmaking is by removing. By carving things out so that it gets to a pure form. I remove things at every stage of the filmmaking: the writing, the casting, the editing. Specifically, for the writing of the script, I always leave a few holes. I leave some mysterious parts because mystery is one of the engines of cinema.

HtN: I was initially able to see Stranger by the Lake while I was in France (and, naturally, without English subtitles). My abilities with French, as you can tell, are relatively lacking. I was merely able to follow the dialogue in fragments, little by little. Even in that instance, visually, the film was entirely comprehensible.

AG: I am always surprised to see how a sequence—or a couple of scenes—that were written in such a way that we were trying to figure-out if they could stay. In the preparation, we are always looking at what we can remove in-advance so that we might save money. There were sequences that could be filmed in the house that we wanted to stay, that we knew were necessary. Then, afterwards, we might end-up removing them during the editing process. Removing them makes the film even better.

The editor [Jean-Christophe Hym] that I work with and I have the tendency to try to hunt down and remove all of the fat that is in the film. We prefer a little bare-bone. There was a sequence, for instance, where it becomes very clear that Jérémie [Pastor, portrayed by Félix Kysyl] was in love with the baker, the father of Vincent [Jean-Baptiste Durand]. Maybe it was an unrequited love. Maybe they did not consummate their relationship. But there was a strong emotional bond there. He really lusted for the father. We felt that this was a crucial scene and we couldn’t remove it but the way that the acting and the take went, we didn’t like it. It didn’t play well. We removed it and then it worked. It worked even better because it provided a surplus of mystery that actually served the story. There is something that I realized specifically for this film afterwards. When you have a film like this that has a strong main character who is changing and reinventing his own stories—coming up with new things—and then you have other characters who are trying to puzzle-out [the truth]. They are all authors of their own stories and their own fables. It creates something additional for the project as it becomes part of their own fantasies and their own reality.

HtN: It is fascinating in this portrayal of Jérémie that he is a chameleon. He takes on the clothing of the baker and, later, Walter [David Ayala]—individuals with whom he has an attraction—and he transforms himself in their clothing. Martine [Catherine Frot], the baker’s wife, first gives Jérémie the clothing of the deceased man. The pajamas, later on. When he sees Walter’s clothes piled on the couch, he impulsively puts them on and develops an immediate intimacy with Walter.

AG: It is in the way of the writing that it becomes necessary for Jérémie to take on this relationship in each of these moments. In these films, I know what I want. I write the script and I follow the script. These details were present in the script from the start. I thought it added this little touch of kink but, also, rule-breaking.

HtN: It is a transgression.

AG:…and slight perversion! It is just moving away from the norm, which could give more dimensions to the character. You could think about him as perhaps being a serial killer. I think that this film plays a lot with fantasy. Sexual fantasies, such as my own. Those of the people in the audience whom you might meet. It becomes this kind of collective fantasy.

HtN: You mentioned your editor, a role which is essential to your process. When you collaborate with your cinematographer, Claire Mathon, with whom you’ve worked on a number of films, there are aspects of Misericordia which operates at the thin barrier of visibility. There are a number of scenes where you are playing with darkness and shadow. Particularly when the police arrive to interrogate Jérémie. It isn’t immediately obvious—to him nor to the viewer—who is speaking. A sleeping / waking interrogation. Given what you are trying to accomplish in the editing, cutting away anything excessive, it seems evident that you are achieving identical ends visually as well. [If ever there is an update of Christian Marclay’s The Clock, there are numerous moments here which could be included, where an electric clock provides the sole illumination for a scene.]

AB: This is something that I was very interested in cinema. When I work with Claire, I had worked with her before [on Staying Vertical and Stranger by the Lake], and I wanted to continue the work, we started on [how to appropriately photograph] night. I wanted to make night natural. How do you represent the night on film? I did not want an artificial looking nighttime. How does do things look like in natural light? You can see darkness. You can control what can be seen of faces and silhouettes. I do not use very large light-sources. I know that this is a very risky behavior. It is dangerous. I basically use Nuit américaine. How do you say that in English?

HtN: Day-for-Night.

AG: Day-for-Night, exactly. Using filters (as well as shooting at twilight or the “magic hour”).

HtN: Even at night, for illumination, approximating the headlights of an automobile to illuminate an actor like a spotlight. A simulation of how the eye works in such circumstances.

 

AG: But this is impossible! It has to be a mix. At twilight, you just have half-an-hour and it is the end of the light. Or shooting with the full moon and using the light from that moment. It is a risky approach where you are approaching deep darkness. That is something that we worked with a lot during the filming with the director of photography and then, also, with the grading. You spend as much time [with the grading].

HtN: It is essential.

AG: The tools that we use have changed. Claire doesn’t hesitate to use several different cameras, calibrated differently, to capture the light.

HtN: It took quite some time to arrive at the correct exposure to get exactly the image that you were seeking.

AG: We took a lot of time to do this. This is really important. It is also risky and dangerous! Especially when all of these cinemas have all of this illumination.

HtN: Like an exit sign. In Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Blue, for instance, the screen fades-to-black. In a cinema, when the screen goes completely dark, you’re surrounded by darkness. But in a living room or theatre with errant illumination, it ruins the intended experience.

AG: I recently saw the film [Misericordia] in a specific room and all of the lights near the screen were on. It washed-out the screen and no one could see anything.

HtN: The films that tend to inspire me are works that justify their existence as a film. Too many films could easily function much better as a stage play without much of a loss or they are superior as a book. When I think of the films of Robert Bresson, for instance, where you’re seeing something that benefits from the specific techniques used to make the film. I find the same to be true of your work as well. You could write a novel of Misericordia—and, in a sense, you have—but what we see would not be at all the same as what we’d read on the page. It would not have the same effect that it has on the screen. I remain curious about your inspirations and how you have arrived at making the kinds of films where you anticipate or expect the intelligence of your audience. You ask for the audience to become an equal partner in what they are seeing. Obviously, they’ve generally self-selected into seeing your film.

AG: I just always want to get to the ending. The ending [by design] is always a good ending.

HtN: Stick the landing.

AG: We say that it is really important. It is something we are very conscious of during the filming and editing. It is one of the big stakes of cinema, making it an art of its own. I don’t really know what channels it or what brings it. One of the things that I use is to establish complicity or a kinship with the spectator. We are in this together, established through humor. I use laughter to create a bond. The viewer becomes an accomplice. A good accomplice!

The way that I do this is that I do not provide everything. I don’t explain every detail so that the audience has to understand things of their own. Sometimes they have to make-up things or make their own version of the story as they process the film. I think that is [an essential] part of filmmaking. A new process. Filmmaking creates these gaps. When I write, I tell everything. I have this internal voice inside the head of my hero and you know everything. But this is a big difference between the two. Cinema is a collective work. First, it is the solitary work of the writer and then it becomes this communal—community-based—filmmaking production. Thereafter, the part with the editor becomes almost like a pairing of two people. What we do is we put ourselves in the shoes of the spectator. With the editor, we imagine the audience and we are looking for everything that is too much or anything that needs to be removed. What we’re doing [fundamentally] is we are experiencing and feeling. We remove everything that is repeated. We are looking at how the film impacts us and moves us, both in terms of emotion and narration.

HtN: The tale of Misericordia is inspired, in-part, by a book that you wrote.

AG: It is hard for me to use the word “adaptation” because the characters have changed, the sequences were rearranged and there is a very different evolution for the characters and the situations. There is this debate between the form and how the form becomes the meaning. The form can sometimes bring out a different kind of meaning, a different kind of content. That is one of the things with cinema and how it is different from literature. Film is constantly grappling with the real and it is in constant confrontation with reality. As you know, you have this ideal film in your head but then you have to deal with the actors and you have to deal with all the contingencies of the outside world and the filming.

HtN: It is not like literature in that way. It is a true collaboration in that regard. An essential collaboration. With the crew and the actors but also, whenever it is finished, with the audience (if it is successful). Unfortunately, far too few French films get released in North America. You could make as many films as you want but then, to get it in front of an audience, there is the necessity of a go-between. In the past, in the U.S., you have worked with Strand [Releasing]. For this film, you’ve partnered with Sideshow and Janus Films. Granted, you aren’t directly involved with the distribution of your work.

AG:I am not generally involved. In France, we have worked with Les Films du Losange [founded by Eric  Rohmer and Barbet Schroeder in the early-1960s]. In the U.S., we worked with Marcus [Hu at Strand] before. We were very happy with them. What happened this year is with Sideshow, Janus and Criterion. I am not the person who makes these decisions. There is the producer…

HtN: …or a sales agent.

AG: I was told that they [Sideshow and Janus] would open doors and it is true that the film has been seen in more places than ever before. [I am here, par exemple.] I am very happy with Sideshow and how they’ve worked with me thus far. Fundamentally, at the root, I am not the one who decides. I trust the people who do the work. I know that they will do everything for the best result. The producers, the distributors, I trust that they know the work and I trust them. So far, so good! With this one, with this film, with this tour, it has been good. Boston, New York and Los Angeles and here [in San Francisco, then Chicago].

[With sincere gratitude to Timothy Buckwalter, Karen Larsen and everyone at Larsen Associates (and our occasional intermediary / translator whenever the efforts in English and / or French became a barrier), as well as all at Sideshow and Janus Films and, undoubtedly, Glenn Fox for his persistent enthusiasm for extraordinary films (who was the first to speak of Misericordia prior to its premiere at Cannes last year).]

MISERICORDIA [MISÉRICORDE] (2024)
dir. Alain Guiraudie  [102min.]   Sideshow + Janus Films

— Jonathan Marlow (@aliasMarlow) Executive Director |  SV ARCHIVE [aka SCARECROW VIDEO]