by Peter J. O’Connell
Frantz. Released
(USA): March 2017. Runtime: 113 mins. MPAA Rating: PG-13 for thematic elements,
including brief war violence. In German and French; subtitled in English.
Prolific French filmmaker Francois Ozon has created works in
a number of genres but is perhaps most noted for what might be called
“metaphysical mysteries,” such as Under
the Sand (2000) and The Swimming Pool
(2003), in which the question is not “Whodunit?” but “What happened—if
anything—and why?” But in Frantz,
Ozon plumbs emotional, not metaphysical mysteries. What are the different ways
that people respond to love and loss, grief and guilt, revelation and
redemption?
The film begins in a small town in Germany in the cruel
April of 1919. Many of the town’s young men perished in the World War, which
came to an end just six months earlier. Emotional wounds are deep and raw in
the villagers, such as Dr. Hofmeister (Ernst Stotzner) and his wife (Marie
Gruber), whose only son, Frantz, died on a battlefield in France not long
before the armistice. The doctor seeks solace with a revanchist group of
similarly bereaved men.
Anna (Paula Beer), Frantz’s grief-stricken fiancée, lives
with the Hofmeisters and, clad in black, seeks solace by daily visits to
Frantz’s “grave,” actually just a gravestone as Frantz was buried anonymously
in a mass grave in France. One day Anna observes a young man (Pierre Niney), a
stranger, paying his respects at the grave. When she questions the man, he says
that his name is Adrien and that he is French. When Anna asks if he was a
friend of Frantz’s in the days before the war, when Frantz was a student in
Paris, Adrien says that he was.
Anna brings Adrien to the Hofmeisters, who initially reject
him. The doctor says: “Every Frenchman is my son’s murderer.” But Adrien proves
to be such a sensitive and appealing person, however, that the Hofmeisters soon
come around to accepting him, for he tells them stories that they love about
what he and Frantz did together before the war.
Dr. Hofmeister’s acceptance of the Frenchman estranges him
from his revanchist associates. He tells them that they should blame themselves
as well as the French for their sons’ deaths because they cheered the youths on
as they went off to war.
For her part, Anna’s relationship with Adrien begins to take
on the outline of a possible romance, particularly when they spend time
together in nature—the fields, waterways, and mountains that surround the
village. Frantz’s grave in Germany is empty, and the absence of that beloved
young man has been the dominating “presence” in the lives of Anna and the
Hofmeisters. Now that is beginning to change with the presence of Adrien, both
as a connection to Frantz and in his own right.
But at this point, some shocking developments occur that
lead Adrien to return to France and Anna to do a desperate act. Encouraged by
the Hofmeisters, however, Anna decides to go to France herself in search of
Adrien. She does not find him where she expects to, but she does enjoy visiting
the Louvre and other places that Adrien said that he and Frantz frequented. She
does, though, have an unpleasant encounter with some French chauvinists, as
obnoxious as the German revanchists.
Eventually, however, Anna does come across some members of
Adrien’s family. He contact with them is dicey, but she comes to realize that
she has to decide whether
she has been relating to Adrien as just a substitute for her
dear, dead Frantz or as the beginning of a new chapter in her own life’s story,
a chapter that might yet have a quite unexpected conclusion.
In any case, Anna is becoming a strong woman in her own
right, a woman who, we may assume, could respond with “Ja!” or “Oui!” to the
question that the existentialists would pose after the Second of the World
Wars: “Deciding whether or not life is worth living is to answer the
fundamental question . . ..” (Albert Camus)
Frantz is a very moving motion picture, both subdued and
powerful, a difficult balance achieved by Ozon’s careful control of his
material and the fine performances of his cast. The scenario by Ozon and his
collaborator, Philippe Piazzo, is an adaptation of a 1932 Ernst Lubitsch film, Broken Lullaby, which, in turn, was
based on a play by Maurice Rostand. But Ozon and Piazzo have made many changes
and added much to what Rostand and Lubitsch did. Worthy of note also is the
cinematography, in which an appropriately black/white/gray palette yields to
color from time to time.
Paula Beer is a young actress of enormous promise. Her
lovely face is very expressive, perhaps most of all when her character is
trying to be inexpressive. Her Anna, an introverted woman who, bit by bit,
develops the self-confidence and independence to come out of her shell, is a
revelation. Pierre Niney, whose narrow face and sharp features are almost
stereotypically “French,” manages to be both appealing and somewhat ambiguous
at the same time. Ernst Stotzner and Marie Gruber as the Hofmeisters are as
solid support as support can be, and Cyrielle Clair as Adrien’s mother makes a
strong impact in a few brief scenes.
