Frantz
Directed by Francois Ozon
A heart-affecting and inventive drama about war, grief, forgiveness, and the healing powers of art.
Film Review by Frederic and Mary Ann Burssat
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François Ozon is a prolific and gifted French film director who has fashioned a heart-affecting and inventive screen adaptation of Ernst Lubitsch's 1932 antiwar drama Broken Lullaby which was based on a play by Maurice Rostand. Ozon takes on the grand and thorny themes of forgiveness, the slippery slopes of truth-telling versus lying, the culpability of fathers who send their sons off to war, and the terrible weight of mourning for those who die on battlefields far away from home.
Anna (Paula Beer) is a beautiful young German woman whose fiance Frantz (played in flashbacks by Anton von Lucke) was killed in the trenches of World War I. She lives with his parents, Hans Hoffmeister (Ernest Stötzner), a doctor, and his wife Magda (Marie Gruber), in the small town of Oldenburg. Kreutz (Johann von Bülow), a very patriotic German, wants to marry her but she refuses even though Frantz's parents think it would be a good idea.
Anna sees a Frenchman, Adrien (Pierre Niney), placing roses on her fiancé's grave. Later she learns that Adrien knew Frantz in Paris before the war. This stranger touches the hearts of Anna, Hans, and Magda. He shares accounts of his visit to the Louvre with Frantz, and they all share photo albums and letters. Adrien feels part of the family and even asks Anna to attend a dance with him. The evening's proceedings are almost spoiled by Kreutz's appearance there. Anna had turned down his invitation to join him for these festivities; seeing her with the Frenchman brings this nationalist's blood to a boil.
In a magical moment, Adrien demonstrates his talent as a professional violinist — it turns out that Frantz also played the fiddle. When Anna goes to the piano and they play together, it is as if art is the only thing that can heal the wounds of war and bring Germans and the French together in harmony.
After Adrien reveals the truth about his relationship with Frantz, he leaves town and Anna refuses to answer his letters. Then, when the time is right for her, she travels to Paris with the intention of seeing whether or not they can forge a love that will be true and long-lasting.
Beer's performance is a tour de force of nuance as she strides through town on her way to Frantz's grave, as she drags Adrien to the dance floor and manages to get him in sync with the music, and when she swoons listening to him play the violin. This is the stuff of melodrama and Ozon does it so well all we can say is "play on, play on!" And so he does with one marvelous film after another.
Screened at The Film Society of Lincoln Center and Unifrance's annual series Rendez-vous with French Cinema, 2017.
Music Box Films, 3/17, DVD 6/13/17
Film International
Not Rated
Purchase from Amazon
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