Critic Reviews

François Ozon’s Peter von Kant, about a film director toxically obsessed with a young actor, is much more than a remake. It’s a valentine.

The uninitiated may wonder what the fuss is about, but for the true Fassbinder Heads out there, Peter von Kant is a revelation. Ozon has made one of the best homages to a master filmmaker ever made.

Peter von Kant is perhaps a bit too rarefied an endeavor to significantly expand Ozon’s following, and some LGBTQ audiences might conceivably flinch at its protagonist’s self-flagellation, much as they did with Fassbinder’s. But its skewering of celebrity is mischievously enjoyable and its declaration of love for a queer-cinema forefather disarmingly sincere.

Both homage and critique, Peter von Kant astutely gets under the skin of the lesbian-themed original, ekes out new resonances and proves both authentically Fassbinderian and altogether Ozonesque in its ironic sensibilities.

It might be a minor work from a major filmmaker but François Ozon’s remix of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s classic has its pleasures, chiefly strong performances across the board, especially from Isabelle Adjani and the immense Denis Ménochet, embodying the German maverick without ever descending into impersonation.

The breath of life and beating heart at the center of countless, Russian nesting doll layers of artifice and art-house reference, actor Denis Menochet doesn’t just anchor Peter von Kant, he makes the Francois Ozon project a film.

François Ozon's "Peter von Kant" is an odd, chilly film, even by this director's standards.

While it does occasionally feel a little too one-note and repetitive, even in its brief runtime, a host of wonderful performances, meticulous set detailings, and expertly claustrophobic cinematography make Peter Von Kant worthwhile.

There is something lighter, almost flippant and French-farcical about this new Von Kant: a man brought low by l’amour, inviting from the audience hardly more than a worldly, sympathetic shrug.

Where Fassbinder crafted extraordinary tableaux of self-parodic misery, such as the drunken, prostrate Petra diving for the phone on her white shag carpet, Ozon breezes through this exercise instead with his usual snappy relish. He has plenty to say about the original’s magnificence, but perhaps not an awful lot to add.