“It was maybe the direction because under the lies there is always a part of truth.”
French director Francois Ozon’s ‘Frantz’ tells a story of a german girl Anna, whose fiance Frantz was killed during first world war. One day on her path to Frantz’s grave, she saw an unknown French young man Adrien bringing flowers and weeping in front of his grave. This French man claimed he was a friend of Frantz, it turned out it was him who accidently killed Frantz during the war, he came here out of guilt and is looking for forgiveness.
This is a beautiful story and was beautifully made. Ozon set its view from a female character,Anna, instead of a view from Adrien. Anna is the core of this film, even the title of the film is ‘Frantz’ but it is all about Anna, how she grieved for the death of her fiance, fell in love with Adrien, struggled and found her own path to live in the future. At the beginning she is someone who just lost the love of her life, she lives with Frantz’s parents, she goes to the grave everyday, we don’t know if she has her own family or friends, what we know is she loves Frantz and believes he loved her too, we also know that she likes French and hopes to go to France one day. Adrien’s appearance is a myth in her life, he is young, fragile, sensitive, talented. I believe Anna falls for Adrien not because she sees him as an embodiment of Frantz. But she sees him as she imagined, the same way she imagined Frantz to be, the same way she imagined France to be.
When Adrien disclosed his intention, who he really is, they both are desperate. Adrien did not receive a forgiveness from her and Anna realizes she was cheated and her hope is gone. When the film goes here, it seems to be an end, but it is actually just a beginning.
Encouraged by Frantz’ parents, who still don’t or might never know the truth, Anna starts her first trip to France, and she arrived, France is not what she has pictured. France is at that time, filled with prejudice against Germans after the war, she stays at a hotel where Frantz once stayed during his study turned out be a hotel for streetwalkers. Eventually she finally found Adrien, but he is already in a relationship with a girl who he will be marrying by the will of his mother. She chose to leave, with dignity, she confessed her love to Adrien, but even he said he does not love the girl he is going to marry and kissed Anna at the train station, but he has no courage to fight back with his mother and pursue a relationship with Anna.
Anna, this character is probably one of the most impressive female characters for me. She carries a load of grieve on her shoulder, she committed suicide but was rescued. She is not, however, a complicated person. She is actually naive and brave, she is naive in a way that she believed she found her prince charming, which was Frantz, she is naive also she asked opinion of Frantz’s parents if she should marry to Kreutz, who she doesn’t love at all. But she is brave that she seizes her happiness, she is brave that she forgave Adrien and allowed herself to fall for him, she is also brave that she left him since she knows Adrien is not giving up everything for her.
The film ends up with Anna stays in Paris, she is making a lie to Frantz’s parents, she is finding a way to move on, she has become a real and strong woman, who accepts and understands. For me, this is not an anti-war film, or even a love film, but a film tells a story of a woman growing up. The way of how Ozon pictured movie makes it more emotional and romantic by using black-white/color change to express the emotion of different moments.
At the end, it is a film about a girl, it is a film about life, we grieve, we love, we move on.
Life is a choice 