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Old 09-10-2022, 12:03 PM
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49.Peter Von Kant (Francois Ozon); grade: A

Ozon remakes Rainer Werner Fassbinder's lesbian melodrama Bitter Tears of Petra Van Kant as a fictionalized biography of Fassbinder. The layers of mise-en-abyme intoxicate like a vertiginy of movie love (made palpable by Manuel Dacosse's liberated camera and rich complementary color scheme). First, in 70 minutes, Ozon tightens and personalizes the Brechtian theatricality of Fassbinder's 2-hour-plus dirge (that climaxes with genuine revelation--a Brechtian coup de grace). Because the film is now about a middle-aged gay filmmaker obsessed with a male ingenue in the '70s, it hones in on the sex politics of today's #MeToo moment. Ozon deepens the topicality by revealing the complexity of sexual and capitalistic exploitation, the willing participation on both sides and the way an artist's desires manifest themselves personally and artistically. So, yes, Ozon finds within Fassbinder's dialectic materialist-then-spiritual tract, the essence of gay sensibility that Fassbinder revealed in his last--and greatest--film Querelle. Hence, the film's diegetic soundtrack includes a rendition of that film's theme song as sung here by Isabelle Adjani. Another layer, Ozon's inspired casting of Isabelle Adjani as Peter Von Kant's muse allows him to investigates her significance as a female expression of gay men's deepest longings: a wall-paper sized photograph of her face looms over many of the scenes, just like the Renaissance artworks portraying the martyrdom of St. Sebastian. So, Ozon continues his own personal investigation of melodrama--distinct form Fassbinder's. Furthermore, Ozon's casting of flirty-eyed Khalil Ben Gharbia suggests his own affinities more than Fassbinder's--and expands to surprising classical and pop ideas of male beauty. (Adjani devastates with her response to Peter’s demand to know if she slept with Gharbia.) Put simply: through creative non-fiction and disguised autobiography and intertextuality, Ozon creates through the characterization of Denis Menochet as Peter Von Kant an emotional catalogue of gay sexual life--the profound need at the center of it all. Menochet gives the performance of the year because his eyes capture the way a lover begs for every morsel of reassurance. Ozon discovers the genesis of that need in a profound scene featuring Hanna Schygulla, Fassbinder's young ingenue now playing "his" mother. However, Von Kant the filmmaker only finds an outlet in movie-making for his capacity for feeling. That makes this top-tier Ozon. But still not great. The Fassbinder structure contains an ellipsis in which the power dynamic shifts between the two characters--deconstructing and critiquing the role of power in human relations. Therein resides the lost opportunity for Ozon to explore the specifics of sexual experience--intimacy--that seems to reside in the memory of the filmmaker's eyes that open and close the film. Ozon's Querelle remains pending.
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Last edited by TrueFaith77; 09-10-2022 at 01:54 PM..
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