Sep 18
International Film Forum: FRANTZ
Shortly after World War I, in a provincial German town conspicuously devoid of its young men, Anna discovers a stranger at the grave of her late fiancé Frantz, one of the thousands of young Germans killed in the war. The stranger soon introduces himself to Anna and Frantz’s parents as Adrien, a French friend of the dead soldier. Growing fond of Adrien, Anna begins to come out of mourning for Frantz and once again embraces her future. Then Adrien makes a terrible confession and disappears, forcing Anna to go searching for him in Paris. With this stirring adaptation of Ernst Lubistch’s classic melodrama Broken Lullaby, François Ozon, a master of cinematic dissemblance, delivers a sumptuous period piece that asks whether a lie can ever be healthier than the truth. Coming at a time when the European Union appears at its most vulnerable, Frantz is also a meditation on Europe: Anna’s journey to France mirrors Adrien’s to Germany, bridging the bloody differences between the two nations in 1919 to show how much they have in common—as well as the nagging strains of nationalism and xenophobia. But this lush romance filmed in black and white and color is above all a profoundly unusual and effective pacifist film, which—aside from one brief but devastating flashback—takes place entirely after the war, surveying the human damage both on the winning and the losing sides.
DIRECTOR
François Ozon