'Misericordia' is a new exploration of queer desire from the director of 'Stranger by the Lake'

If Stranger by the Lake haunted you in the best way, then prepare yourself for director Alain Guiraudie’s latest exploration of queer desire in Misericordia.

In this film, Guiraudie trades cruising in the beachside woods for exploring dangerous desires in a small town in rural France. It follows Jérémie (Félix Kysyl) who returns to his small town in the wake of the death of his former boss and mentor. Rather than leave, the out-of-worker baker extends his stay for far too long, insinuating himself in his former boss’s family. Soon he becomes the object of desire, of, well, kind of everyone, and according to the synopsis, becomes “tangled into a web of violent criminal behavior and erotic physical desire.” He lives with his boss's widow, becomes the object of her son’s jealousy, and strikes up a friendship with the local priest.

It's a complicated story and once that is personal to the director. “At the age of 60 — well, I’m not quite 60, but nearly — I’d like to say that this film was sort of made on the strength of what I would call teenage fantasies,” Guiraudie toldIndieWire via translator. “Well, the idea of falling in love with the mother of one’s best friend or the father of one’s best friend. You have this whole image of desire and eroticism as it is linked to religion based from childhood or teenagehood.”

The film opens in select theaters from Sideshow and Janus Films on March 21, but in the meantime, you can watch the trailer below.