A HOLE IN THE OZON LAYER
A FRENCH MELODRAMA THAT’S A LITTLE ALOOF AND NOT AS FRISKY AS SOME OF THE DIRECTOR’S OTHER WORK BUT IS STILL ELEGANT
WORDS: GUY LODGE
FILMS
FYI
Pierre Niney played Yves Saint Laurent in a biopic of the gay fashion designer in 2014, winning a Cesar Award for best actor
FILM OF THE MONTH
FRANTZ
Pierre Niney, Paula Beer, Ernst Stötzner, Alice de Lencquesaing
→ Queer French auteur François Ozon never makes the same film twice, although his output alternates between the formal and the frisky. Anyone who wants to see the angularly handsome Pierre Niney in one of Ozon’s friskier films will have to wait, I’m afraid. A post-WWI melodrama, shot mostly in serene black and white, Frantz cultivates an effective mood of wistful melancholy from the get-go. Dashing young Frenchman Adrien (Niney) turns up at the village gravestone of a fallen German soldier he claims to have known in Paris. The dead man’s fiancée Anna (winsome newcomer Paula Beer) is mournfully drawn to the stranger — although, all things being Ozon, things aren’t quite as they appear. A partial remake of Ernst Lubitsch’s buried classic Broken Lullaby, it’s an elegant, secret-riddled pretzel that remains a little aloof.