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My main comparison would be a rural Woman in the Window, a dry comedy made from anxiety dreams. But with the way this film works, the murder, the comedy, and the procedural elements all seem unlikely until they start to appear. The film's style is fairly classical, spatially laid out and composed for relationship dynamics, surprises, or psychological zeroing in—the recurring side characters are even treated like the vivid faces of contract players on the studio rosters of yesteryear. But this traditional form is undercut by the fact that the characters are more or less inexpressive and the streaks of surrealism and comedy keep us uncertain, or should I say the hints of possible surrealism and possible comedy, since the strength and skill of the film is in how it lives in, and continually widens, that in-between space, keeping you guessing at what it's doing and how to react.

With its limited, familiar elements, Miséricorde makes meaning through repetition: of times, locales, situations, actions. It's about rituals and how everything gets absorbed into the vortex of cyclical routines of this town, which breed a particular variety of rural claustrophobia. In opposition to that rigid structure, you have the chaotic (in terms of film conventions) element that the main character has or creates a sexual undertone with just about every other character in the movie. His faced is aged-boyish, like a vintage ragdoll of Alain Delon, and he doesn't seem to have much in the way of charm, but slowly, one by one, each of his relationships takes a sexual turn, all unfulfilled. Which is how the film turns from a rural noir into a droll comedy. In my screening, silence at the beginning gave way to the nervous titters of an audience not sure of how much of the film's humor is intentional which then in turn, in the film's final third, gave way to the roars of a room of people being won over, in fair play, in a game they didn't know was being played. The film's Catholic and gay themes are fused and deepened in this uneasy handoff between genres, as all threads climax at once in the film's disarming final stretch, with a priest being the only character whose words cut through the otherwise intentionally anodyne dialogue, as he embodies both a disturbing philosophy and the film’s simmering tenderness and loneliness without ever becoming a character we can fully trust.

with the priest giving some of his foraged psychedelic mushrooms to the main character to help him cope with his guilt, which results in the character's death. Which results in his soul entering the priest's body. The two souls duel over one body and over the novel's narration as they try to solve the practical, theological, and sexual problems of this situation. For example, the priest is known in the town for sleeping next to people who are recently bereaved or otherwise in need. Needless to say, that ritual becomes even dicier than it already might have been with an unpriestly mind inside of his body. All of which adds a funny shading to the final shot of this film.