The prolific French director François Ozon puts a metatextual spin on “The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant,” the classic German tale of amour fou.
With “Peter Von Kant,” the prolific French director François Ozon pays homage to one of his most enduring influences, the New German Cinema icon Rainer Werner Fassbinder, nearly 20 films after first adapting a Fassbinder play with his early feature, “Water Drops on Burning Rocks” (2000).
The film puts a metatextual spin on the classic Fassbinder play-turned-movie “The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant,” a menage-à-trois melodrama about a fashion designer, her assistant and her muse, largely inspired by Fassbinder’s own tempestuous affairs of the heart. Ozon makes these parallels literal, placing a doppelgänger of the renegade director — complete with a mustache, a portly physique and a few of his signature statement pieces like his leather vest and white suit — in the title role.
The filmmaker Peter Von Kant (Denis Ménochet) spends his days barking orders at his tight-lipped, gangly number two, Karl (Stefan Crepon), until, one day, Sidonie (Isabelle Adjani), the aging diva whose career he helped start, drops by with her latest boy toy, Amir (Khalil Gharbia). Instantly smitten with the younger man, Peter fast-tracks their romance by casting Amir in his new film and giving him a set of keys.
Modeled after the North African actor El Hedi ben Salem (Fassbinder’s lover and the star of his masterpiece “Ali: Fear Eats the Soul”), Amir, a gin and tonic-guzzling libertine, drives Peter wild with jealousy, unfolding a series of cruel power plays and spittly shouting matches until the couple hit their breaking point.
Admittedly, there’s a baked-in appeal to such an adoring resurrection of the man and the myth, through the prism of one of his most beloved works (the casting of a Fassbinder collaborator, Hanna Schygulla, as Peter’s mom, doesn’t hurt).
But there’s a mocking air to Ozon’s chamber-piece histrionics, in part because Ménochet plays Peter like a self-pitying ham, oohed and aahed at with every breakdown. Fassbinder’s work finds a kind of truth in the artifice of emotionally plumped-up dramas, but Ozon’s often tedious tragicomedy never hits such a stride, trusting that the material will automatically confer greatness; instead, “Peter” comes off like top-shelf fan-fiction.
Peter Von Kant
Not rated. In French and German, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 25 minutes. In theaters.
Source: Movies - nytimes.com
