Movie Review—Frantz

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.