François Ozon's Frantz (2016)

 

François Ozon's Frantz is something of a bold undertaking, something only an established director would get away with: a film not only in black and white – with the exception of a few scenes in colour evoking happy times – but also half in French, half in German. It might initially seem that Frantz is something of an exception to Ozon's previous work full of sexual ambiguity, although Ozon has always been interested in the nature of identity, in the outsider, and both main characters are seen as outsiders here.

The symmetry of the double language is echoed in several respects by the symmetry of the content: the Frenchman Adrien (Pierre Niney) is first seen in Germany then in France whereas the German woman Anna (Paula Beer) is first seen in Germany and then France; both protagonists play musical instruments and are interested in cultural matters; both Adrien and Anna experience hostility when visiting the others' countries; both speak the others' language fluently, etc.

Most of all, both have very strong emotions about Anna's dead fiancé, killed in World War I. Anna first sees Adrien placing flowers on Frantz's grave – actually not his grave as he was buried in France, but Anna and her would-be in-laws with whom she lives – Doktor Hans Hoffmeister (Ernst Stötzner) and Magda (Marie Gruber) wanted some kind of remembrance of Frantz.

Slowly, both the Hoffmeisters and Anna come to accept the presence of the previous enemy, even welcome him telling of his friendship with their loved one, and Adrien's grief is so great that the audience might easily (especially as this is an Ozon film) suspect a homosexual affair. Not Anna, who warms so much to the cultured Adrien with whom she has so much in common that – with the blessing of her would-be in-laws – she goes to France to seek him out. She has even accepted that Frantz has been killed by Adrien, although she hasn't told Hans and Magda (contrary to Adrien's bidding) anything about this.

Some detective work finds Adrien at his extremely frosty mother's, but also with Fanny, the young woman he's shortly to marry. Exit Anna very quickly, and we hear Magda announcing in a letter from Anna that she's having a wonderful time with Arien and that she doesn't know at present when she'll be returning. So what will Anna be doing? The viewer thinks of the painting in the Louvre that's been shown a few times: Manet's Le Suicidé.

The original source of Frantz is Maurice Rostand's play L'Homme que j'ai tué (1915), which was first adapted to the cinema by Ernst Lubitsch as Broken Lullaby (1932).