If nothing else, Misericordia is about the dangers of being the hottest person in a small town, and that nothing good happens after 2:00 am. It all starts when Jérémie (Félix Kysyl), now in his mid-30s and living in Toulouse, returns to the village that he grew up in. Shot from the backseat of his car looking through the windshield, his arrival is marked by wandering stares by the locals standing on the street corners. He's here for the funeral of his former boss and supposed lover, the local baker who now leaves a void in the community.

Left behind are the baker's widow Martine (Catherine Frot) and adult son Vincent (Jean-Baptiste Durand). The former is happy to see Jérémie in her time of mourning, the latter icy based on some implied fallout during the boys' youth. Jérémie's initially planned short stay quickly turns into multiple days, allowing for the polite indifference from Vincent and some of the other locals to erode and be replaced by festering rage.

The exact nature of Jérémie's game is hard to define. Just like Claire Mathon's rain-soaked cinematography, writer/director Alain Guiraudie keeps us in the fog throughout much of the runtime. Jérémie doesn't seem to have much to return to in Toulouse, nor can he hope to gain much in this village. But that won't stop him from trying, with his greatest asset being his skill as a flirt. For as much as boiling anger seems to permeate through each scene, Guiraudie finds the humorous absurdity of all this backwardness. Everyone seems to simultaneously want to sleep with each other, the rotation also including Vincent's friend Walter (David Ayala) and the village priest Father Philippe (Jacques Develay).

Something that Jérémie isn't good at is covering up a murder, which he commits against someone in the village. He plays a game of two lies and a truth with everyone, including the local police. The truth makes the lies seem a little more credible, although he always has the same look on his face as a little kid who sweeps all of his trash under the bed instead of throwing it out as his parents told him to. Guiraudie captures every side-eye glance and judgmental stare of the supporting cast as Jérémie continually tries to dig himself out of this mess. There isn't tension and suspense in the traditional form, mostly a curiosity about how this web will get even more tangled.

The performances are all well-done and understated, keeping things on a glacially paced path. Things don't go as you would expect, nor do they resolve themselves in a clean fashion. At only 100 minutes, it's watchable and entertaining enough, although it perpetually stops just shy of being great.