Peter Von Kant | Little White Lies

Peter Von Kant

27 Dec 2022 / Released: 30 Dec 2022

Two individuals sitting close together, a woman with dark hair and a man with a beard, both looking towards the camera.
Two individuals sitting close together, a woman with dark hair and a man with a beard, both looking towards the camera.
4

Anticipation.

A gender-flipped take on a Fassbinder's 1972 classic.

3

Enjoyment.

Only works when its not being overly slavish towards the original.

2

In Retrospect.

Moments that shine through, but feels too much like an intellectual experiment.

François Ozon fan­boys over Fass­binder (again!) with this reimag­in­ing of 1972’s The Bit­ter Tears of Petra Von Kant.

Watch­ing François Ozon’s Peter von Kant is some­thing of a strange expe­ri­ence – like a fun­house that feels famil­iar while also being a bit deranged. From its very title, one can’t quite shake off the feel­ing of déjà vu that comes with it explic­it­ly play­ing off Rain­er Wern­er Fassbinder’s sem­i­nal 1972 film and play, The Bit­ter Tears of Petra von Kant, and that feel­ing per­sists throughout. 

With his lat­est fea­ture, Ozon tries doing two things: loose­ly adapt­ing Fassbinder’s play, com­plete with a gen­der swap; and cre­at­ing a play­ful biopic of the icon­ic Ger­man film­mak­er. Ozon turns his favourite film­mak­er — one whose work he is not just inspired by, but has adapt­ed in the past (2000’s Water Drops on Burn­ing Rocks) — into Peter von Kant (Denis Méno­chet), a suc­cess­ful film­mak­er who shares his flat with his assis­tant Karl (Sté­fan Crépon), with whom he shares a romantic/​sadomasochistic relationship.

Through Sidonie (Isabelle Adjani), an actress he con­sid­ers a friend, he meets a hand­some young man named Amir (Khalil Ben Ghar­bia) and an affair kicks off. The prob­lem with affairs, though, is that they fre­quent­ly end trag­i­cal­ly, and, thus, Peter becomes as moody and fool­ish as any­one with a bro­ken heart.

Peter isn’t just a stand-in for Fass­binder, but a replace­ment for Petra von Kant’s fash­ion design­er, and the orig­i­nal play’s nar­ra­tive beats are all present. This fusion of both adap­ta­tion and biopic results in some­thing a bit askew, uncer­tain which one it wants to be more and what tone it wants to strike throughout. 

Ozon ditch­es the dis­tant, almost caus­tic, aes­thet­ic of Fassbinder’s film ver­sion, and replaces it with some­thing more colour­ful and flip­pant. It’s a stark con­trast, but one that works in pair­ing with some of its per­form­ers and their camp tendencies.

Take Adjani’s bril­liant turn as Sidonie, which boasts a com­ic aware­ness that suits this self-aware adap­ta­tion so well and feels like exact­ly what it should be – not so much a par­o­dy of Fassbinder’s work, but a height­ened ver­sion of it; a drag per­for­mance of Fass­binder, if you will. 

Her brief appear­ances are among the most mem­o­rable aspects of the film, as is every dead­pan reac­tion that Crépon gives the cam­era or his boss. They sit in stark con­trast to the rel­a­tive dull­ness of Méno­chet and Ghar­bia (imi­tat­ing Fass­binder and El Hedi ben Salem respec­tive­ly), and even a pass­ing per­for­mance by Han­na Schygul­la (who worked with Fass­binder a num­ber of times) as von Kant’s mother.

At a cer­tain point, catch­ing all the niche ref­er­ences becomes a bit like insid­er base­ball. The dia­logue, much of it stripped from Petra von Kant, nev­er man­ages to feel mean­ing­ful when removed from its source and mould­ed into some­thing new, and Ozon’s work is far more inter­est­ing when he’s explor­ing his pet themes, from pow­er dynam­ics to the rela­tion­ship between icons and their messy his­to­ries. Every time it attempts to land a dra­mat­ic beat, it falls flat, sim­ply because there’s no weight to any of the per­for­mances or dialogue.

And there­in lies the prob­lem with Peter von Kant: it’s a lot more inter­est­ing and excit­ing to think about than it is to watch. With­out Fassbinder’s inef­fa­ble abil­i­ty to cre­ate a trag­ic romance through rig­or­ous film­mak­ing and a sense of for­bid­den love in every fibre of its being, Ozon ends up with a film caught in an emo­tion­al and the­mat­ic No Man’s Land. 

But when a moment does con­nect, it’s because of how stark­ly dif­fer­ent an approach he takes. One dance scene, smack in the mid­dle of the film, is Ozon at his best – Peter’s apart­ment is drenched in light­ing rem­i­nis­cent of Dou­glas Sirk’s All That Heav­en Allows (a Fass­binder favourite), and Méno­chet bounces from wall to wall, danc­ing to a record while pin­ing over his muse. No words are need­ed oth­er than the music, because the pro­duc­tion itself says it all. These brief splash­es of beau­ty – of indul­gence – ele­vate the film beyond mediocre intel­lec­tu­al experiment.

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