Frantz

A con­vo­lut­ed web of white lies con­sti­tutes the frame­work for François Ozon’s lat­est offer­ing – a medi­a­tion on the grief and dev­as­ta­tion war leaves in its wake. Despite a pen­chant for turn­ing his hand to dif­fer­ent gen­res and styles, this lat­est from the chameleon­ic direc­tor comes as some­thing of a sur­prise. Frantz is a heavy-hand­ed, mono­chrome anti-war melo­dra­ma whose sto­ry flits between a frag­ment­ed Ger­many and France dur­ing 1919.

The script is a loose adap­ta­tion of the 1930 play by Mau­rice Ros­tand, Bro­ken Lul­la­by. This source mate­r­i­al pro­vid­ed the basis for Ernst Lubitsch’s 1932 film of the same name – a rare for­ay into dra­ma by a mas­ter of com­e­dy, and one which promis­es to be a tough act to follow.

The film opens in the small Ger­man town of Quedlin­burg where we meet Anna (Paula Beer), lay­ing down flow­ers to mourn the wartime death of her sol­dier fiancé, Frantz Hoffmeis­ter (Anton von Lucke). Intrigued to learn that a mys­te­ri­ous French­man, Adrien (Pierre Niney), has been pay­ing reg­u­lar vis­its to Frantz’s grave, Anna is over­joyed to learn of his con­nec­tion to her lost love. Adrien claims to have befriend­ed Frantz in Paris before the war.

In a brave shift away from the source mate­r­i­al, Ozon reimag­ines the film’s entire sec­ond half, the sub­tle­ty of which almost makes up for its com­par­a­tive­ly weak open­ing stretch. This is the director’s first Ger­man lan­guage film, and one in which he uses his bilin­gual cast well. Beer and Niney dance flu­id­ly between Ger­man and French as their char­ac­ters become acquaint­ed – Adrien’s stilt­ed accent serves as a con­sis­tent reminder of his oth­er­ness, while Anna’s stun­ning com­mand of French deep­ens her capac­i­ty for empathy.

Ozon makes one oth­er sig­nif­i­cant break away from Bro­ken Lul­la­by – he shifts focus from Adrien’s char­ac­ter onto Anna’s, and thank god for it. Beer is stun­ning in the lead role, almost suc­ceed­ing in sin­gle­hand­ed­ly ele­vat­ing the film from lack­lus­tre pas­tiche to emo­tion­al­ly charged, char­ac­ter-dri­ven delight.

The film is at its most effec­tive when por­tray­ing a fam­i­ly tread­ing-water while bond­ed in grief, and it seems apt that it opens with a con­ver­sa­tion between its two pri­ma­ry female char­ac­ters and clos­es with a sim­i­lar moment of brav­ery and ten­der­ness. Ozon frames Frantz as a roman­tic love sto­ry, but this in itself is an act of decep­tion. It’s the rela­tion­ship between Anna and her would-be moth­er-in-law that’s most affecting.

A final take­away is noth­ing to do with Frantz at all, but refers to the great cav­i­ty left behind by his pass­ing. It’s a tale of betray­al and com­pas­sion, and a con­sid­ered con­tem­pla­tion of war’s endur­ing futil­i­ty. After a year fraught with polit­i­cal unrest in Europe and fur­ther afield, Ozon’s gen­tle ode to paci­fism, for­give­ness, and uni­ty feels like much-need­ed ton­ic, even if it’s some­times dif­fi­cult to swallow.