We’ve had more than our fair share of riffs on Pasolini’s “Teorema” as of late, from Bruce Labruce’s explicit and unwatchable remake this year to Emerald Fennell’s Tik Tok-ified (and unwatchable) retooling from the year before. Some more directly indebted to Pasolini’s transgressive blueprint than others, these reinterpretations all share an affinity for a strangely (sometimes inexplicably) alluring central figure who seduces his way into a small, elite circle. But everybody knows that the French can never be excluded in a game of horny wits, so “Misericordia” has entered the fray with its own particular spin on the material—one that, in practice, is far more intriguing (and chaste?) than any of those other desperate plays at shock value.

Where most films taking inspiration from “Teorema” bring the subject into an unattainable class that they can only infiltrate from below the belt, Alain Guiraudie...