By Jason Osiason

Misericordia never sits still. It looks quiet on the surface but the whole thing is buzzing underneath. It is funny in a dry way, then suddenly mean, then weirdly tender, then off into something that feels half like a dream. Deadpan, darkly comic, surreal, somber, all of it at once. It is not trying to teach you a lesson, but there is always something thoughtful running underneath.

Jeremie comes back to his small town for his old boss’s funeral. Martine, the widow, lets him stay at her house. She is warm, almost too warm, and it throws him off balance. Vincent, her son, bristles with resentment that grows sharper until it finally breaks. From there Jeremie is pulled deeper into the mess around him, every move tightening the grip of the town.

The cast makes it work. Felix Kysyl plays Jeremie like a man who wants to disappear but cannot stop looking. Catherine Frot makes Martine’s kindness so generous it starts to feel suspicious. Jean Baptiste Durand gives Vincent a restless pride that tips toward menace. Jacques Develay as the priest brings in humor that only adds to the strangeness. David Ayala as Walter steadies the edges with a presence that feels like an escape Jeremie will never take.

At its core the film circles obsession. Desire and shame, need and guilt, each wrapped around the other until they blur. Horniness becomes a curse, awkward and funny one moment, heavy and cruel the next. It has the sting of a Coen brothers small town nightmare but queerer and sadder, closer to the way Martin McDonagh’s stories laugh at suffering while leaning into it. The film leaves you uneasy, laughing one second and squirming the next, and when it ends it just stays with you, heavy and unshakable. [A-]