Film Forum

The end of the First World War (1914-1918) is approaching its 100th anniversary. French filmmaker Franҫois Ozon’s elegant love story, FRANTZ, recalls the mourning period that follows great national tragedies, as seen through the eyes of the war’s “lost generation”: Anna, a bereft young German woman whose fiancé, Frantz, was killed during trench warfare and Adrien, a French veteran of the war who shows up mysteriously in her town, placing flowers on Frantz’s grave. Ozon’s characters wrestle with deeply felt, conflicting feelings: survivor’s guilt, anger at one’s losses, the overriding desire for happiness despite everything that has come before, and the longing for sexual, romantic and familial attachments. Inspired by Ernst Lubitsch’s 1932 drama, BROKEN LULLABY (and with stunning visual references to Caspar David Friedrich), the film stars the handsome, suave Pierre Niney (who played Yves St. Laurent in the movie of the same name) and the lovely, melancholy Paula Beer.

FRANCE      2016   113 MINS.  IN GERMAN AND FRENCH WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES
MUSIC BOX FILMS 

Reviews

“Elegant...astonishingly beautiful and inquisitive…[Ozon’s] most polished storytelling achievement since 2004’s SWIMMING POOL. Elevated by a quartet of stunning performances and the haunting, evocative world that slowly comes alive around them. A secular complement to 2013’s Polish drama IDA...FRANTZ effectively touches on what it means to live in the shadow of a dark past while adapting to the present.”
– Eric Kohn, Indiewire

“A richly imagined and superbly assembled period piece. Continues [Ozon’s] penchant for spinning thematically complex material into highly accessible fare… It also continues the filmmaker’s long line of complex female heroines...and as usual, the actors are all in fine form.”
– Boyd van Hoeij, The Hollywood Reporter