It's light, breezy and artfully silly

 

Director Francois Ozon wisely stocks The Crime Is Mine with veteran French actors. The list includes Fabrice Luchini (as a judge), Regis Laspales (as a detective), Olivier Broche (as a clerk to a judge), and Dany Boon (as an architect). I begin here because in revamping a 1934 play, Ozon needed actors with a deep understanding of the ripe exaggerations needed for screwball comedy. Add Isabelle Huppert as a fading silent film star, and Andre Dussollier as the head of a tire-manufacturing company and you've got the makings of an old-fashioned comedy served with a feminist twist. Rebecca Marder and Nadia Terezkiewicz give the movie its center as down-and-out roommates -- one a lawyer, the other an actress. This youthful duo finds itself caught up in a murder. Ozon includes a trial that perhaps anticipates the age of tabloid sensation because the defendant views the courtroom as a launching pad for an acting career. It's difficult to resist the performances of a cast intent on making the most of every opportunity to display finely honed character chops. The Crime Is Mine stands as a fine example of how smartly to execute farcical material that easily could evaporated in the mists of nostalgia. Better yet, Ozon plays with old-fashioned forms without needing to declare his superiority to them. There’s also icing on the cake: Production designer Jean Rabasse, cinematographer Manuel Dacosse, and costume designer Pascaline Chavanne give this pleasure of a movie a rich retro look.

A father's request torments his daughter

 

French director Francois Ozon returns to the screen with Everything Went Fine, the story of a woman (Sophie Marceau) whose stroke-disabled father (Andre Dussollier) wants to put an end to his life. Dussollier’s Andre asks Marceau’s Emmanuèle to help arrange an assisted death for him, a position to which he clings even after he begins to show signs of recovery.  Andre's refusal to live a diminished life seems an extension of a selfishness that's revealed in some of the film's flashbacks. Emmanuele faces a major obstacle. Medically assisted death is illegal in France, so Emmanuèle and her sister (Géraldine Pailhas) must get their father to Switzerland, where he can fulfill his desire. Based on a memoire by Emmanuèle Bernheim, the movie deals with the guilt and anger resulting from Andre's request. Andre's chilly wife (Charlotte Rampling) shows little interest in his suffering for reasons which the screenplay eventually reveals. Hanna Schygulla, the great German actress, appears as a Swiss woman who arranges assisted deaths for those who can afford to travel to Switzerland, where people legally can choose to die. Ozon admirably resists the temptation to sentimentalize a story told with an even hand and little judgment of its characters. Without indulging in showy emotional displays, Marceau excels as a woman living with conflicted emotions that allow for no easy resolution.

The fight against a pedophile priest

It took me a while to commit to director Francois Ozon's By the Grace of God, a movie about the justice-seeking efforts of a group of men who, as children, had been abused by a pedophile priest. As adults, the men joined forces to seek some acknowledgment of what had happened to them, and, in some cases, to find peace for themselves. Ozon (Double Lover, Swimming Pool) focuses on the French city of Lyon, where the men live. Alexandre (Melvil Poupaud) begins the charge against the priest. Motivated by conscience, Alexandre remains faithful to the church. He and his family are practicing Catholics. As the movie develops, we learn that Alexandre wants to reform the church from the inside. Francois (Denis Menochet) takes another view. He joins the fray as an atheist. He, too, has a family but has given up on the Church. Swann Arlaud portrays Emmanuel, the most damaged of the men. Despite a genius IQ, he has wasted his life in failed relationships and chronic underachievement. Eric Caravaca portrays Gilles Perret, a level-headed surgeon who also joins the group. So why -- given the movie's topicality and the explosive nature of its subject -- did I have initial difficulty getting into the film? At first, By the Grace of God seems as if it's going to be an anti-church procedural. But Ozon carefully lays out the story, allowing its complexities to emerge as the men band together and the story deepens. Representatives of the Catholic Church don't fare well but aren't turned into caricatured villains, either. Francois Marthouret portrays Cardinal Barbarin, a churchman who knows how to be sympathetic while simultaneously doing nothing to address the problem of a pedophile priest. As the priest who abused the boys when they were Scouts, Bernard Verley creates a character who's contemptible and pathetic. The priest admits his wrong-doing but when he meets with any of the adult men for attempted reconciliations, he still seems to relate to them as children. In all, By the Grace of God winds up being about more than child abuse. It's also about the complex group dynamics that develop when victims seek justice and about the lasting impact of one of the most severe of all imaginable betrayals.

Can the wounds of war ever heal?

Director Francois Ozon's Frantz examines grief in the aftermath of World War I.

Whenever I thought director Francois Ozon's new movie about coping with grief after World War I was being a little too explicit, Ozon introduced something that changed my mind: a plot development, a character revelation or an unexpected nuance.

In telling a story that takes place before the wounds of war have begun to heal, Ozon (Under the Sand and Swimming Pool) draws us into the world of his characters and into ourselves, posing a question that should make for much post-movie debate. What would we do if we found ourselves dealing with the same situation as Ozon's characters?

Using black and white and vivid color to contrast times of unbearable grief and fleeting forgetfulness, Ozon renders a beautifully subtle surface that masks the agonies that lie beneath.

Anna (Paula Beer) is a young German woman who lost her fiancé (Anton von Lucke) during the war. Anna now lives with her late fiance's parents (Ernst Stotzner and Marie Gruber). Most of the movie takes place in a small German town where the scars of war aren't readily visible, but where no one has begun to move on.

Each day Anna visits the grave of her beloved fiancé, Frantz. She's wearing her grief like armor against the world: A local from the town (Johann von Bulow ) wants to court her, but Anna avoids relationships. Besides, von Bulow's Kreutz comes across as a bit of a creep.

The daily lives of Anna and the dead man's parents are interrupted when a French soldier (Pierre Niney) arrives in town. He, too, visits the grave of the fallen Frantz. Ultimately, he begins to associate with Anna and with Frantz's parents. He tells them that he and the late Frantz met in Paris before the war. They shared cultural interests, became friends, but were separated when the fighting broke out.

Ozon raises questions that heighten involvement in the story. Were Frantz and Niney's Adrien lovers? Had Frantz hidden this part of himself from both his fiancé and his parents? What precisely was the connection between Frantz and Adrien?

No fair telling more, but know that the drama unfolds against a backdrop of residual German resentment toward the French. Frantz's father initially greets the visitor with undisguised hostility. But Frantz's mother, desperate to learn about her son's life as a student in France, wants to hear what Adrien has to say.

Slowly, Anna begins to awaken. She may even be developing a romantic interest in Frantz, a situation that raises eyebrows among her neighbors, who can't accept the humiliations of defeat.

Eventually, Adrien departs for Paris. After a time, Anna follows, and we expect that these two will console each other; both have experienced what they view as the pointless carnage of war.

I won't tell you about the obstacles Anna and Adrien face, although you'll surely consider one of the major ones as you speculate about what you're watching.

Directed with welcome sensitivity, Frantz might have borrowed a title from director Mike Leigh. Secrets and Lies would have been appropriate, and those familiar with cinema will recognize that Ozon and his writing collaborator, Philippe Piazzo, have reworked Ernst Lubitsch's 1932 drama, Broken Lullaby. But it's not necessary to know anything about the film's predecessor to appreciate what Ozon and his fine cast have accomplished.

They've taken us deep into the lives of characters who live in the past, but whose emotions still feel painfully alive.

Student and teacher, but which is which?

Imagine that you are a man in your 50s, and that you once aspired to being an important novelist. Time has passed, and you find that your life has devolved into teaching uninterested (and mostly ungifted) students in a French town where your wife runs an art gallery. You know -- without question or doubt -- that your dreams have turned to ash.

If you can imagine such a man, you already know quite a bit about Germain, one of the main characters in director Francois Ozon's In the House.

Fabrice Luchini -- an actor who knows how to lose himself in the deluded self-seriousness of the characters he plays -- portrays Germain, a man we meet while he's grading papers and waiting for his wife (Kristin Scott Thomas) to arrive home from work.

Germain's life begins to change when he discovers 16-year-old Claude (Ernst Umhauer), a student who takes care of his invalid father and who has been deserted by his mother. Germain quickly learns that Claude may have writing talent, although judging by the assignments Germain gives ("What I Did Last Week"), it's small wonder that most of his students don't give a damn.

It's just here, though, that Ozon begins to reveal his subject: the way we can become ruinously absorbed in other people's fictions.

In this case, the teacher plunges into the student's work. Claude decides to write about Rapha (Bastien Ughetto), a classmate who likes basketball and who appears to live an ultra-normal life with his mother (Emmanuelle Seigner) and father (Denis Ménochet).

Claude finds fascination in the apparent normalcy of Rapha's family. Germain encourages his pupil to immerse himself in the lives of this "typical" family. For his part, Claude needs little encouragement to become aroused by Seigner's Esther.

Ozon shows us what Claude is experiencing with his "adopted" family, but here's the tricky part. We see everything through Claude's eyes. Is he telling us the truth or is he inventing most of what we're seeing? Is he a perceptive documentarian or a budding novelist or, perhaps, a bit of both?

Once again, Ozon (Under the Sand and Swimming Pool) gives us a thriller unburdened by the need for conventional thrills, a drama in which tensions transfer from the characters to us as we try to work our way through the maize that Ozon constructs.

All of this takes place against an intellectual backdrop that explores the processes by which fiction is created and the consequences that can result from the conspiratorial bond between writer and reader.

Luchini is perfectly cast as a teacher who increasingly falls under the sway of a wily student, and Umhauer, who flashes an ambiguous smile, plays his part with malicious aplomb.

All of this builds to one of the most memorable concluding shots you'll see in any movie, a beautiful depiction of Ozon's themes. In fairness to Ozon, I won't describe the shot here. Discover it in a theater.

In the House deals with serious issues, but Ozon's touch is mostly light, and the story is not without humor, much of it rooted in the story's smart and devious fascinations.