Frantz

"It makes me want to live." Anna (Paula Beer)

After viewing Manet's Le Suicide, protagonist Anna asserts her will to live despite the deaths from WWI and especially her fiancé, Frantz (Anton von Lucke). Up to this point director Francois Ozon has kept the mostly black and white melodrama in a state of mourning, relieved by the visit from a French friend from the war, Adrien (Pierre Niney).

A film of such classical pedigree, which was originally made by Ernst Lubitsch in Broken Lullaby, takes its time for dialogue to flesh out the ironies and plot twists emanating from Adrien's visit. His secrets will change Anna's life and that of her guardians, Dr. and Mrs. Hoffmeister. It is a film of depth that asks us to accept life's imperfections and our enemies.

Over all this deep drama lies the allegorical relationship between France and Germany: The Germans do not easily accept this French visitor, despite the fact he has come to honor his friend, because he reminds them of the humiliating German loss from that war (still a very proud people). As Anna learns the true nature of Adrien's visit, like Germany and France she is caught in the struggle of vengeance versus forgiveness.

We learn about the salutary effect of that forgiveness through a confessional scene, where the priest is able to express the hope that Anna can forgive Adrien just as the French must forgive the Germans. It's not a subtle subtext, but it is a powerful theme that dogs French and Germans to this day.

Frantz the movie will keep you thinking not only about the aftermath of WWI, but also of the ignorance most people have about the ones we love the most. Not all is as it seems, but like Anna we must choose life over death while we have the choice.

Although Le Suicide is a fine and pretty painting, life, including a new love, is the real subject for this film and our future.

'Frantz' would be the perfect film to be aired by the bilingual Franco-German television station Arte. It's half German and half French. In fact, the film is about how these two countries come to grips with the aftermath of the First World War. There is a German and a French lead character, and both languages are spoken. This is unusual, but doesn't feel strange. The story starts in 1919, with a young widow visiting the grave of her fiancé, who died in France during the war. When she notices a Frenchman visiting his grave, she is taken aback. He presents himself as an old friend from the time the soldier studied in Paris. But little things reveal that this is not the whole story. Soon, the truth emerges and the story takes some surprising and moving twists. Acclaimed French director Francois Ozon has put a lot into this movie. It is an anti-war story, but also a bitter-sweet love story as well as a portrayal of a society suffering from a post war trauma. It is most of all an appeal for mutual understanding and rejection of prejudice. In this sense, the message is now more urgent than ever, in view of the growing support for populist and even racist politics on both sides of the Atlantic. The film is shot in beautiful and stylish black and white, perfectly capturing the elegance of the period. Ozon doesn't need any distracting subplots or flashy gimmicks, apart from the use of colour in a few scenes. I couldn't quite figure out the meaning of this. Some colour scenes are set in a different time frame, others seem to indicate the rare moments of happiness in a time that's full of grief and sorrow. The very last scene captures one of those moments in a wonderful way.

At the grave of her fiancé, Anna is startled to find a strange foreigner overcome with emotion. Anna's curiosity leads her to find out more about this stranger, and deeper still as she begins to understand the nature of his visit. It concerns forgiveness and sympathy for the lives of others, yet also cowardice, suffering, war and dark secrets. A similar mix of emotions swirls within and around Anna. Lies as well as truths are revealed. It becomes difficult to tell one from the other. Anna and the foreigner, Adrien, attempt to reconcile the truths with the lies, and the light with the darkness. This is done not merely through words, but with the way the wind moves through the trees, chords of the piano and violin, an unexpected swim, a beautiful view from a hill top, and more.

Part of the magic of the film is in the way it reveals how we are all as vulnerable as Anna and Adrien. There are dark secrets in all of us that may be turned to love, or perhaps other way around.

Standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon obscured by mist, I felt a wave of emotion as the fog lifted and I could see the whole chasm – a mile deep and ten miles across, open in all its color and depth before my eyes. I felt a similar wave of emotion as this film shifted back and forth from black and white to color. Later I talked with a couple who disagreed. They thought the color shifts were too obtrusive and told them what to think. Yet good story tellers, as Ozon surely is, will toy with emotions in this way. I thought the shifts and cinematography were wonderful. The film characters are appropriately complex. The plot takes intriguing twists and turns. Themes include an anti-war element that Ozon deals with subtlety and adeptly. He doesn't rub our faces in it. The film is set in Germany and France in the aftermath of World War I, yet the themes are just as poignant today. The war is over, didn't you hear?! Languages and settings shift between German and French. Seen at the Miami International Film Festival.

It is 1919 and a young French man arrives in a little German village and puts flowers on the grave of a victim of the First World War. What was the relationship between the French man and the dead German? What shall be the relationship between the Franch men and the fiancee of the dead German? These are the central questions in the film "Frantz" by Francois Ozon. The first question is answered roughly halfway, the answer to the second question remains uncertain until the very end.

Up till now I had only seen "Huit femmes" (2002) and "Swimming pool" (2003) of Francois Ozon, and with the First World War drama "Frantz" Ozon goes "for something completely different" to use this Monty Python phrase.

The story behind "Frantz" was adapted earlier by Ernst Lubitsch in "Broken lullaby" (1932). "Frantz" is however not a remake of this film, if only because Ozon telles the story from a different perspective. The German Lubitsch takes the young Frenchman as his main character (Adrien played by Pierre Niney in "Frantz") The Frenchman Ozon takes the German fiancee as his main character (Anna played magnificently by Paula Beer).

This change of perspective is however not the only and not the most important difference between the two films. In "Frantz" Ozon takes a more complicated (but not necessarily negative) stance on the value of white lies versus the truth. In an interview about "Frantz" he says that behind each lie there is a desire.

In contrast with "Broken lullaby" "Frantz" was made well after the Second World War. Ozon had therefore knowledge about the relationship between the peace treaty of Versailles, ending the First World War, and the outbreak of the Second World War. The scenes showing remaining virulent nationalism are in this respect very disturbing.

"Frantz" is shot mostly in black and white, but some scenes are in color. In such a case I can't help to ask myself if there is a logic behind these choice. During the film I found none. In the above mentioned interview Ozon told that the emotionally more optimistic scenes (the film is about two persons damaged by the war and trying to pick up their lives again) are in color.

This is a story about how lying can be a good thing, a compassionate thing. When the female lead, Anna, goes to confession about her lies concerning her encounter with a Frenchman who seems to have known her dead finance, a victim of WWI, the priest in her German town tells her that her lies were totally forgiveable because they were meant well. This sounds simple, but the story is also about the aftermath immediately following WWI and the French and German feelings about one another's country and people. A film which begins perhaps in a mediocre way but becomes increasingly affirmative with the development of the plot.