Plenty of film-makers explore the intersection between desire and violence; it’s a recurring theme in the work of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, for example. But in the films of Stranger By the Lake director Alain Guiraudie, the overlap between the two is so great, it almost feels as if they are one and the same thing.

In this slippery French-language thriller, boyish, floppy-fringed Jérémie (Félix Kysyl) returns from Toulouse to the village of Saint-Martial for a funeral. His arrival unlocks a gnawing hunger among the villagers: Martine (Catherine Frot), the widow of the dead man, invites Jérémie to stay in her spare room for as long as he chooses, on the understanding that his personal space is hers to invade. Martine’s bullish son Vincent (Jean-Baptiste Durand) is unsettled by Jérémie’s presence, but there’s a menacing intimacy to their half-serious bouts of woodland wrestling.

Then there’s the local priest (Jacques Develay), with his candid, prying gaze, who always seems to be picking mushrooms at the same time as Jérémie, and whose interest in the younger man goes well beyond his spiritual wellbeing. And what of Jérémie himself? Is there a motive behind his prowling visits to sad-sack local farmer Walter (David Ayala) beyond just reconnecting with an old friend over glasses of pastis?

A murder raises the stakes, but even before the mystery surrounding the death of a central character, Guiraudie seeds Misericordia with needling sexual tension and latent savagery through an ominous, skin-prickling score by Marc Verdaguer and Claire Mathon’s snaking, shifty camerawork. It isn’t entirely satisfying – there are too many unfulfilled subplots and murky motivations – but this intriguingly tricky drama has a perverse appeal.

• In UK and Irish cinemas