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Alain Guiraudie is an atypical and invaluable filmmaker, with an already extensive career (seven feature films, along with medium-length and short films), whose films are rooted in realism, a lure that lends itself to fantastic escapism. His imagination focuses on the question of desire as the driving force behind his characters’ actions. This desire, often, but not exclusively, homosexual, redefines relationships between people, opening up existential gaps and bright futures.
In 2013, L'Inconnu du lac (The Stranger in the Lake) brought him greater recognition. Part chronicle, part crime novel, Guiraudie tells the story of Frank, a handsome young man who falls in love with Michel in a male cruising spot. One evening, he discovers Michel murdering another man, but nevertheless decides to continue his relationship with him. This tale of dangerous passion under the sweltering sun of Lake Sainte-Croix, at the foot of the Gorges du Verdon (a long way from Guiraudie’s native Occitanie), also serves as a précis of the relationships involved in gay cruising, marvellously distanced by two endearing, and sometimes comic, characters: Henri, a man whose wife has just left him, and the policeman, who seems to be investigating both the murder and the world that is opening up to him.
Guiraudie’s films may often take the form of a picaresque soap opera, but they also raise questions. From his earliest short films, his characters are restless and pensive, constantly on the move. Years later, Rester vertical (Staying Vertical) (2015) is an extension of these indecisive, disorganised characters.
Alain Guiraudie is also a novelist, publishing the imposing Rabalaïre in 2021, from which he now seems to draw inspiration for his work as a filmmaker. In Occitan, the term refers to a lonely person who never feels at home, ‘a person who zigzags right to left’. Miséricorde (Misericordia), his latest film, presented at Cannes and during the Estival, is at the crossroads of his influences, between hedonistic fantasy and existential angst. The cast includes young actor Félix Kysyl (who attended Premiers Plans last year as a script reader), Catherine Frot and Jean-Baptiste Durand, director of Chien de la casse (Junkyard Dog).
In partnership with the Théâtre Le Quai, which is presenting Et j'en suis là de mes rêveries by Maurin Ollès, based on Rabalaïre, Premiers Plans is delighted to pay tribute to Alain Guiraudie and to enable qudiences discover or rediscover an auteur who has left a unique mark on French cinema.
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