Frantz

Frantz (2016) is set in a small German town just after the First World War. Visiting her fiancé's grave, Anna sees a Frenchman there. Adrien says he knew Frantz in Paris and is taken into the family's home. Not all of what he tells them is true. The chain of sources is long. The film is a loose reworking of Ernst Lubitsch's Broken Lullaby from 1932, which came from Maurice Rostand's 1930 play L'homme que j'ai tué. François Ozon shifts the story to the German side and changes who is telling it. The second half goes where Lubitsch did not: Anna crosses into France, and we watch the same lie operate on the other side. The film shows both countries mourning their dead in identical words. Ozon shot it in black and white and moves into colour in particular scenes; colour is reserved for moments remembered or hoped for. Paula Beer plays Anna and won the Marcello Mastroianni Award at the 73rd Venice Film Festival. It received eleven nominations at the 42nd César Awards and won Best Cinematography for Pascal Marti. It runs 113 minutes. Good for: postwar drama, period filmmaking, and black and white photography. Less good for: the pace is slow and the plot barely moves in the first half. The shifts into colour read as too obvious a signal for some. The ambiguity of the ending may not satisfy.