EDGE Interview: Out French Filmmaker Alain Guiraudie on his New Daring Film 'Misericordia'

Desire and yearning drive much of "Misericordia," the latest feature by out French filmmaker Alain Guiraudie. After the death of a baker in a small, seemingly idyllic village, his former employee, Jérémie (Félix Kysyl) shows up to pay his respects. He's welcomed with open arms by Martine (Catherine Frot), the man's widow, although her son Vincent (Jean-Baptiste Durand), who was childhood friends with Jérémie, shows hostility that suggests raw feelings from the past. Tensions between Jérémie and Vincent come to a head in an act of violence, and in the aftermath the town's priest (Jacques Develay) takes an interest in Jérémie that will entrap him in town for good.

Guiraudie, who broke through internationally with his explicit gay thriller "Stranger by the Lake" over a decade ago, returns to genre territory with "Misericordia" but in a different register. Much of this film plays off of suggestion, implying suppressed sexual urges and past resentments without any explanation or context. Guiraudie's interests lie in the way these emotions linger, manifest themselves in unorthodox ways, and retreat once they're exposed. It's all brought together brilliantly by Guiraudie's excellent direction and his ensemble, along with the gloomy, autumnal visuals by cinematographer Claire Mathon that cast a sinister mood on the bucolic setting.

EDGE chatted with Guiraudie about "Misericordia," with the assistance of his French translator, while he was promoting the film's release in North America. Guiraudie discusses how his approach to using non-professional actors has changed over the years, the way he portrays homosexuality to get at universal truths, and more.

EDGE: What drew you to want to make what you've called an erotic film with no sexual acts in it?

Alain Guiraudie: I've made a lot of films at this point, and it was starting to become kind of a specialty of mine to have sex scenes, so I wanted to break with that. On the other hand, this is not so completely new for me, because I did the same thing in the film "That Old Dream That Moves." That was a film [permeated] with desire throughout, but it is a desire that is never accomplished in sex, so it becomes a kind of eternal desire.

EDGE: You portray working class characters in your films, which is unconventional within today's cinema. I want to know how that defines your casting process and finding people to fit these roles.

Alain Guiraudie: Nobody asked this kind of question [Laughs]. I don't think I ask myself that question in that way. I don't think I say to myself, "What does a farmer or a working person look like?" The idea for me is more to find actors or actresses whom we haven't seen before.

For a long time, I opposed famous actors, stars and figures of the masses. But, in fact, it turns out that it works. Twice now, I've worked with very famous actresses in France. Both those actresses are [also] bourgeois women in real life. They both live in the very heart of Paris, and I see that they work perfectly well playing figures of the people. The other thing I want to say is that I was very happy to meet David Ayala, who plays Walter [another friend of Jérémie and Vincent from childhood] who in real life is Romani. So he really is a figure of the people. I've always deplored that we don't have enough actors of that style in the French cinema.

To go back to your question, I think at the beginning of my career with my first films, that kind of thinking did have a big impact on the casting process. I was always trying to get non-actors to act in my films for the very reason that I wanted to have people of the people in my films. I frequently worked with this mix of amateur actors and professional actors, but I quickly found the limitations of this system. It's very difficult to get people who aren't trained to act, particularly when there's a lot of dialogue. I also think it's very difficult to work with non-professionals for sex scenes.

EDGE: Speaking of the cast, much of your film is suggestive, especially in the performances. I wanted to know how you work with your actors to make sure they're conveying just the right amount of implication.

Alain Guiraudie: Much of my directing of the actors is actually done [by the time] I've chosen them. I've worked with them quite a bit before I've hired them. In that process, I'm able to observe their subtleties, their understanding of the film that we're making together, and their understanding of the characters. I really like to blend the actor and the character so the actor's real personality feeds the character quite a bit, and I know they have those reflexes. There's a story that I like to tell [about] Catherine Frot, the actress who plays Martine. In all her interviews in France she said that, with me, one shouldn't do anything. She had the impression that she wasn't even working.

On another level, much of the directing of the actors takes place in the editing room. That doesn't exclude working on the shoot. We rehearse before we shoot, and obviously there are adjustments that happen on set, but these are generally very subtle. Truly, much of [the] work happens before we're actually shooting.

EDGE: One thing I like about your work is how you use the specificity of queer portrayal to get at very universal ideas.

Alain Guiraudie: That's something that's really fundamental to my overall projects, and it started with "That Old Dream That Moves." There was the idea of talking about issues and concerns that were very intimate fantasies, and that's certainly the case with "Misericordia." There are a lot of fantasies that are very personal fantasies. The idea was to share these fantasies with everybody talking about them in a universal way. And I think that's why I often use the form of a kind of fairy tale or genre cinema.

And then there was something that became very present in my head quite quickly, which was to never have homosexuality be the subject of the film in such a way that I could avoid finding myself in a niche cinema. For example, I find that I took a long time to even refer to homophobia in my films. For me, homosexuality, men who desire men, was something that really appeared obvious and understood by everyone.

EDGE: Your film is morally ambivalent towards its characters. I wanted to know what you do to make sure that's maintained so your film never tips its hand in one direction.

Alain Guiraudie: It's not like I'm completely sure of myself from the beginning. I start by writing the screenplay. We take things out, we put them back in, and it's kind of the same process on the shoot. We're feeling things out. For [some] things we'll shoot several versions, and then I think that the balance you're talking about is built in the editing room. That's where we decide what should be said, what shouldn't be said, and what's worth saying. To give an example, I really asked myself a lot about this line in the film "We need murders," which the priest says to Jérémie. I really hesitated about whether we should keep that one, and ultimately we did. But there are many lines in the dialogue like that I hesitated about, and so obviously there are many lines that are cut.