It was halfway through writing Misericordia that Alain Guiraudie decided upon using a priest’s visible erection as a punchline. In fact, the 60-year-old French auteur’s tenth feature started out as more of a drama than a carnal comedy until the pastor’s presence injected the screenplay with humour, nudity, and existential quandaries. “The priest became my favourite character,” Guiraudie tells me via an interpreter who’s sat to our side. “He embodies moral questions I have myself. And, as a gay man in this village, he feels a love that’s not reciprocated. He’s used to it.”

Known for his transgressive, sexually explicit thrillers, Guiraudie earned worldwide acclaim in 2013 for Stranger by the Lake, a queer classic set at a gay cruising spot. Sipping espressos in a London restaurant in March, Guiraudie acknowledges that Dazed readers may not have seen anything else he’s directed. “I thought I’d made Stranger by the Lake for 10,000 people, but then it was a success,” he says. “That built up to the point where I was disappointed that Misericordia wasn’t selected for official competition in Cannes. But they’re my two best-known films simply because they’re my two most accomplished films.”

The list of critics, awards voters, and directors who agree is vast. Cahiers du Cinéma officially named Misericordia the best film of 2024, while Ari Aster, Claire Denis, and Payal Kapadia are effusively quoted in marketing materials. At France’s César Awards, it was nominated for everything from Best Film to Best Director. When I ask what “accomplished” means, Guiraudie laughs, then gives it some thought. “[Misericordia] is my strongest script. The casting is near-perfect. In terms of editing, we cut out all the slack. We kept the best of it.”

After following a car down a long, winding road to the rural, autumnal woods of France’s Occitanie, Misericordia introduces its unreadable protagonist as Jérémie (Félix Kysyl). Jérémie is ostensibly returning to his hometown to pay respect to his former boss, a deceased man who was the father to his childhood friend Vincent (Jean-Baptiste Durand). While Vincent believes Jérémie is trying to have sex with his mother, Martine (Catherine Frot), Jérémie’s real romantic connection appears to have been with Vincent’s father. What follows isn’t a love triangle but a multi-shaped, pansexual diagram that involves Jérémie, who has a girlfriend, switching between Martine and a local priest (Jacques Develay) as bed partners, plus the late-night visits to the much-older Walter (David Ayala) and a forest where mushrooms grow out of a rotting body.

“I have a lot of affection for my characters,” says Guiraudie. “I’ve yet to make a film where there’s a character I hate. The reason for this is, I put a lot of myself in my characters, even the nasty bastards. So I have to like them.” I note that Misericordia is remarkable for the openness of its ensemble, to the extent that the viewer knows each individual’s sexual preferences – or, rather, an absence of boundaries. “That’s a question that’s come up specifically in the UK about them being frank.” Is it because the British are uptight? “Germans are quite uptight, too, but I didn’t get that question there.”

Guiraudie’s filmography is full of films that defy expectations. Just take Staying Vertical, an arthouse drama that later reveals itself to be titled after a penis gag, or Nobody’s Hero, a political satire so controversial it didn’t get UK distribution. Stranger by the Lake, too, stunned cinemagoers with its unsimulated sex. Once a reputation is established, does it get harder to shock audiences? “I’m not a provocateur,” the director says. “My aim is to make things that are quite unsavoury. Sometimes they’re perverted fantasies and morally questionable, like a woman who has her son’s killer in bed with her. I present them in a way that makes people think and reflect, rather than to shock them.”

There’s constant talk of sex without there being any lovemaking. I liked the idea of desire that is perpetual but never comes to an end via the act of having sex

I apologise. Perhaps the better word is “surprise”? “You’ve very right. Shock – no. But I do seek to surprise people. I like to blur the lines between relationships, change them up, and make things that might seem very improbable, possible.” He adds, “The way characters express their desires, and the way audiences feel this desire, is through my gaze. The camera is always placed in a way that makes you think they’re being watched by a third person.”

What’s especially surprising – and, though he doesn’t like the adjective, shocking – is that Misericordia might be Guiraudie’s first film without a fornication scene. It is, nevertheless, a film bursting with sex: physical desires and romantic intentions drive the storyline, dominate the dialogue, and ultimately lead to a decomposing corpse that produces edible fungi. “It’s truer to reality that there’s constant talk of sex without there being any lovemaking. I liked the idea of desire that is perpetual but never comes to an end via the act of having sex. It’s hanging in the air. It teases the audiences, and especially audiences that have seen my previous films.”

During the writing process, Guiraudie infused the script with the emotions of an adolescent harbouring sexual desire for a friend’s parent. However, he insists it’s a film he could only have written on the cusp of 60. “As a teenager, I had too many fantasies and anxieties. I needed this life experience to let my ideas mature.” A more direct example of allowing an idea to mature is that Misericordia is adapted from Guiraudie’s own novel Rabalaïre, which had a prominent priest character. When Jérémie commits murder, the crime is covered up by a clergyman with his own moral code – and, indeed, erotic requests.

The film’s mischievous amalgamation of homicide, rampant horniness, and Hitchcockian night-time sequences has led to comparisons with Claude Chabrol, whose Merci Pour le Chocolat also revolved around murder and mushrooms. Indeed, Ari Aster is quoted in the US trailer remarking, “Absolutely great. Reminded me of the best of Chabrol and Buñuel.” However, Guiraudie claims to be more of an Ingmar Bergman enthusiast, mainly due to the framing. “I feel very far removed from Chabrol. There’s cynicism in his work, where he looks down on his characters. My films are an expression of my own fantasies. They’re not immediate elements, but the writing is matured from years of experiences.”

What Guiraudie cites as an inspiration is fairytales and the “surreal aspect of things”, but anchoring the stories in reality. His next feature will be an adaption of The Mutiny on the Bounty, but in Tahiti, with Tahitian actors speaking indigenous Tahitian. “France has the heavy weight of its colonial past, and it still bears consequences today,” he says. “I’m interested in making films that aren’t in French, but not in English. What sparks my interest is indigenous languages.”

Misericordia, too, is political, albeit more subtly, revealing its sly, subversive themes through a priest who questions whether society needs murderers to balance itself out. Even if the film is ludicrous when reading a plot synopsis, it unfolds in a grounded, believable manner. “I want the audience to feel troubled and shaken up,” says the director. “To be taken seriously as a storyteller, you have to respect the laws of reality.”

Case in point, Guiraudie was in despair over the state of the world when he started shooting Misericordia, and he unfortunately discovered the timeliness of the film. Nearly two years later, it’s still resonating. “It’s about collective responsibility,” he says. “It reminds me of what the priest says. What allows us to condemn one man killing another man, when we let hundreds and thousands of people be killed, whether in Ukraine or Gaza? We’re all responsible for the killing that goes on.”

Misericordia is out in UK cinemas on March 28