Misericordia (2024) review

Jérémie (Félix Kysyl) drives from Toulouse to Saint-Martial to pay respects to his former employer Jean-Pierre Rigal, who has passed away, and then decides to hang around and gets himself into serious trouble: he stays in the house with Jean-Pierre's widow Martine (Catherine Frot), flirts with rotund farmer Walter (David Ayala), is accused by Martine's son Vincent (Jean-Baptiste Durand) of wanting to sleep with his mother ... and then Jérémie and Vincent have a physical altercation, Vincent is killed, and the local priest (Jacques Develay) offers to protect Jérémie in exchange for sexual favors.  It's another off-kilter expedition in Monsieur Guiraudie's Fantastic World of Pansexuality in which the physically unappealing have plenty of suitors and everyone needs a bop on the skull with the Horny Stick, except Jérémie comes across quite unfavorably (it's unclear why his character is so beloved since he's missing any sort of personality) and there are multiple contrivances (the major one: his refusing to go home) that dampen the film.  Those issues aside, there are some effective elements of comedy (my favorite: people trying to get Jérémie to confess to the crime while he's asleep) and the last scene is playfully Freudian.