On the podcast, Alex recommends Alain Guiraudie’s film Misericordia and delves deep into the film’s compelling opening scene.
Today, Alex Heeney recommends Alain Guiraudie’s multi-César-nominated LGBTQ+ erotic thriller, Misericordia. Misericordia takes many twists and turns that she doesn’t want to spoil. So Alex introduces the film briefly before delving into what we can learn from the opening sequence.
In excellent movies like Misericordia, the opening scene teaches us so much about how to watch the film and what’s to come. Alex teaches how to read a film’s opening scene in Reel Ruminators: A Movie-of-the-Month Experience.
In Misericordia, Jérémie returns to a small town for the funeral of his former boss, the local baker. He may have been in love with the baker, but it’s been many years since he’s been back. As Jérémie and the baker’s widow grieve his loss, sexual tension abounds everywhere (except between these two). Soon, a disappearance in the family sparks new alliances, suspicions, and quite a bit of humour.
Misericordia is a prime example of the great movies that come out in cinemas after the Oscars and don’t get nearly as much attention. In episodes 160 and 162 of the podcast, we went deep on the kinds of excellent movies like Misericordia that come out in the spring.
Show Notes on Alain Guiraudie’s Misericordia
Read C.J. Prince’s interview with Guiraudie on the film.
C.J. discussed why Misericordia is one of his favourite films of 2025 in episode 162 of the podcast.
Podcast Credits for this episode on Misericordia
This episode was edited, produced, and recorded by Alex Heeney.
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An AI-generated transcript for the episode is available on Apple Podcasts.
