jdavisLina

Inspired by her relationship with her father and memories of childhood vacations, Scottish director Charlotte Wells crafted an emotionally persuasive father-daughter piece for her directorial feature film debut.

Paul Mescal, who made his film debut in Lost Daughter (2021), plays a divorced father (Callum) using his best efforts to give his daughter a festive holiday during his 31st birthday week at a grade C resort in Turkey. Callum is all in with being present for his daughter but is battling deep personal regrets. Nine-year-old newcomer Francesca Corio gave a brilliant break out performance as his ebullient 11-year-old daughter Sophie - she was nothing short of captivating. The framing of these two leads was critical in portraying their familiar intimacy and loving relationship despite any cracks in their relationship;

DP Gregory Oke shot a volume of moody and poignant close-ups.

The film jump cuts often, but Wells stated in her Q & A that the film was not meant to have a conventional narrative, and that she intentionally withheld important details. The story unfolds from Sophie's POV, structured loosely as a memory piece on Sophie's own 31st birthday. From the opening moments, rendered in the coarse grains of camcorder footage, Wells addresses the difficult act of sifting through memories real and imagined in probing the past with a purpose. Sophie's search for the real memories is captured in Oke's cinematography and the editing, as the film cuts between father and daughter mid-conversation, repeatedly framing and reframing a scene. Oliver Coates fashioned intricately detailed sound design with memorable song selections that on their own were replacement dialogues.

"Misericordia" is Latin for "mercy," and I gave the clever yet very narrowly contoured screenplay much of it. The performances were excellent, and the antagonist was easy enough to dislike, but there were too many unexplored backstories that needed to fold out; instead, the guesswork laid the story flat because most of the characters were thinly developed despite the available fodder for deep character studies.

The film is not without its philosophical musings on guilt and compassion for forgiveness, so Guiraudie had all the makings of a much greater film in hand.

I am fully aware that Misericordia was chosen for the best film of 2024 by Cahiers du cinéma and nominated for multiple César awards-but without this excellent cast ensemble and the outstanding cinematography, this film should have been a suspense short, not a feature.

Despite the stunning imagery provided by the skilled DP,, there were at least two if not three completely different stories led by the visual narratives that never intellectually merged to support a premise. The film was a disjointed and fevered dream at best.

This film was an unfortunate waste of skilled performances by known talent and exceptional performances by at least one unprofessional child actors.

The conclusory sequences were just a cessation of images, accordingly a complete disappointment.

When one sees that Malick is the writer and director, expectations are high. This film was an experimental miss that could have been brilliant if just one story was told.