BY THE GRACE OF GOD opens in St. Louis Friday November 22nd at Landmark’s The Tivoli Theater.
Review by Stephen Tronicek
When something terrible has happened to you, it leaves an impression in your brain. Sometimes those things are so strong that the mark that is left seems to spoil the mood of your being. Francios Ozon’s By the Grace of God submerges you in this through its subject matter and the strength of its vetern director. Structurally, it’s a film built to wade you into it’s sickening and scarring subject matter. The film starts following the true story of Alexandre Guerin (Melvil Poupaud), a family man of devout Catholicism, revealing that he was molested as a child by a pastor at his camp Bernard Preynat (Bernard Verley). As his complaints fall on deaf ears, he takes action eventually drawing another victim Francios Debord (Denis Menochet) into the cause. Other victims soon join the pack, namely Emmanuel Thomassin (Swann Arlaud).
This isn’t necessarily the type of story that you’d expect from Ozon, the master of shocking, sexy, lurid films such as Satire (a personal favorite) or Swimming Pool but the structure of the piece plays to Ozon’s shocking strengths. The greatness of those works came from the way that Ozon could present a piece of information and then violently recontextualize it, creating a shock within the audience. This turns out to be the great strength of By the Grace of God. Ozon may not be able to make a joke out of everything the way did in Satire, but he can sure use the audience’s violent reaction to his benefit, this time making it build. It’s like a sickness in the back of your mind created by content but also by the tone that each new section holds.
Alexandre’s is disturbing, but holds back ever so slightly. It still works within the emotional texture of a typical prestige drama. In this, it’s actually the best tonally of the three sections. It doesn’t prepare us for what’s coming. As the film moves into Francios’ section of the story, things start to be more serious. The sickening shock slowly starts to rear its ugly head, but there is still an element of hope. Then you get to Emmanuel’s. There is hope in Emmanuel’s story, but the scary intimacy of the story suddenly becomes quite clear. The film paints Emmanuel as less than a perfect person, and it shouldn’t, but it’s quite shocking to find the film dropping all its investigative aspirations and becoming a realistic and terrifying portrait of a man marred by trauma. It’s a shocking tonal shift, one that submerges the audience in a sickening state.
By the Grace of God sinks into your soul, bringing it up on one note and poisoning it on another. It’s a tricky balance but Ozon, old pro that he is, is up to the task.
BY THE GRACE OF GODwill screen at The Plaza Frontenac Cinema (1701 South Lindbergh Boulevard # 210 PLAZA) Sunday, Nov 10 at 8:15pm and Monday, Nov 11 at 8:00pmas part of this year’s St. Louis International Film Festival.Ticket information can be found HERE and HERE
François Ozon — the celebrated director of “8 Women,” “Swimming Pool,” and “Young and Beautiful” — offers a distinct change of pace from the satirically witty explorations of sexuality that comprise most of his work. Instead, in “By the Grace of God,” he mounts a gripping drama that follows three men who band together to dismantle the code of silence that continues to protect a priest who abused them decades ago. Based on events from the 2019 conviction of Cardinal Philippe Barbarin of Lyon for concealing the conduct of a predatory priest, “By the Grace of God” compassionately illustrates the effects of trauma on survivors and their families in an urgent portrait of resistance that explores both the power of mobilization and the mysteries of faith. The Hollywood Reporter writes: “This is a social justice film made with purposeful conviction and a quiet, never strident, sense of indignation. It’s persuasively acted, elegantly shot, subtly scored and briskly edited to keep the dense, procedural action moving forward as the narrative baton is passed among three adult men who take the difficult step of speaking out about their boyhood experiences.”
Review by Stephen Tronicek
When something terrible has happened to you, it leaves an impression in your brain. Sometimes those things are so strong that the mark that is left seems to spoil the mood of your being. Francios Ozon’s By the Grace of God submerges you in this through its subject matter and the strength of its vetern director. Structurally, it’s a film built to wade you into it’s sickening and scarring subject matter. The film starts following the true story of Alexandre Guerin (Melvil Poupaud), a family man of devout Catholicism, revealing that he was molested as a child by a pastor at his camp Bernard Preynat (Bernard Verley). As his complaints fall on deaf ears, he takes action eventually drawing another victim Francios Debord (Denis Menochet) into the cause. Other victims soon join the pack, namely Emmanuel Thomassin (Swann Arlaud).
This isn’t necessarily the type of story that you’d expect from Ozon, the master of shocking, sexy, lurid films such as Satire (a personal favorite) or Swimming Pool but the structure of the piece plays to Ozon’s shocking strengths. The greatness of those works came from the way that Ozon could present a piece of information and then violently recontextualize it, creating a shock within the audience. This turns out to be the great strength of By the Grace of God. Ozon may not be able to make a joke out of everything the way did in Satire, but he can sure use the audience’s violent reaction to his benefit, this time making it build. It’s like a sickness in the back of your mind created by content but also by the tone that each new section holds.
Alexandre’s is disturbing, but holds back ever so slightly. It still works within the emotional texture of a typical prestige drama. In this, it’s actually the best tonally of the three sections. It doesn’t prepare us for what’s coming. As the film moves into Francios’ section of the story, things start to be more serious. The sickening shock slowly starts to rear its ugly head, but there is still an element of hope. Then you get to Emmanuel’s. There is hope in Emmanuel’s story, but the scary intimacy of the story suddenly becomes quite clear. The film paints Emmanuel as less than a perfect person, and it shouldn’t, but it’s quite shocking to find the film dropping all its investigative aspirations and becoming a realistic and terrifying portrait of a man marred by trauma. It’s a shocking tonal shift, one that submerges the audience in a sickening state.
By the Grace of God sinks into your soul, bringing it up on one note and poisoning it on another. It’s a tricky balance but Ozon, old pro that he is, is up to the task.
The French drama FRANTZ is film about secrets, lies, mourning and the aftermath of World War I rather than the romantic period film is might at first glance appear to be. Set shortly after what was known then as the Great War, and also known as the war of the Lost Generation, for how it virtually wiped out a whole generation of young men and, ironically, as the War to End All Wars, this drama explores the personal costs of war.
As we mark the hundredth anniversary of World War I, the time is right for a film about the survivors of that devastating conflict. The first war fought with modern weapons, such as missiles, tanks and machine guns, and a war fought for years in trenches, its horrendous nature sparked a number of anti-war films in its aftermath, including ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT and Ernst Lubitsch’s 1932 film BROKEN LULLABY.
This haunting, lyrical drama is loosely based on Ernst Lubitsch’s film and the stage play that inspired it. FRANTZ focuses a young German woman who lost her fiance Frantz in the war. Set in 1919, immediately after the war, Anna (Paula Beer) is living with Frantz’s parents, a small town doctor (Ernst Stotzner) and his kindly wife (Marie Gruber). With no family of her own, Anna shares their home and their mourning for the loss of their only child. Her life is one of quiet routine, visiting Frantz’s grave daily and leaving fresh flowers. One day in the cemetery, she notices a stranger also leaving flowers on Frantz’s grave. The mysterious man turns out to be a handsome young Frenchman named Adrien (Pierre Niney).
FRANTZ is one of those intriguing films where you think you know where it is going, only to have it veer off into a new direction with fresh revelations. It is something this surprising film does repeatedly, like turning corners in a maze. What seems at first as if it will be a lovely period romance instead becomes something quite different, yet the story is both emotionally and intellectually satisfying. French director Francois Ozon sets the story in Germany and France, and it is in German and French with English subtitles. The drama explores themes of grief, lies, anger, survivor’s guilt, and self-discovery, as well as war’s toll. The resemblance between the name Frantz and the country France is deliberate.
Resentment towards the French runs high in the small German town where Anna lives. Adrien has come to Germany to meet Frantz’s parents but there is an air of mystery about exactly why he is there. Frantz’s father rebuffs Adrien’s first attempt to speak to him, based solely on his French accent. But Frantz’s mother surmises that he may have met their dead son in Paris, where he was studying before the war. They talk about Frantz’s love of music and Adrien reveals he is an accomplished violinist. Adrien tells about visiting the Louvre with Frantz to see a particular painting by Manet and later plays for them on Frantz’s violin. Still, there is a feeling of something unspoken.
The film is mostly in black and white but, from time to time, it slips into color – a lush, romantic color. That artistic choice works surprisingly well, boosting the emotion and underlining the deadly pallor of post-war lives. Director Ozon uses black and white photography to evoke 1919, a time period we know mostly through black and white photos and films, but also to suggest Anna’s grief and the drabness of post-war Germany. Germany was the loser in the war and was then further humiliated at the Treaty of Versailles, setting the stage for the surge of nationalism and the Nazis, which is also referenced in the film. Black and white images also give the sense of a harsh reality. The film slips into color during flashbacks and in periods of happiness or in periods of lying. The switch to color takes place suddenly or subtly, and brings a rush of emotion, of enjoyment, like life returning.
The story takes place partly in Germany and partly in France, and was shot on location. By choosing to start the film in Germany, and in German instead of French, French director Ozon places the point-of-view with the Germans, the losers in the war, and on Anna rather than Adrien, as the Lubitsch film did. The German town is filled with resentment towards the French, the victors in the war, and when Frenchman Adrien shows up in town, he is met with open hostility and remarks about family members killed in the war. The scenes also illustrate the fertile ground for the Nazis’ nationalist appeal.
The focus of the film is on beautiful Anna, played skillfully by 21-year-old German actress Paula Beer, and life in this small town in post-war Germany. Anna’s life is a routine of mourning, moving in circles between her home with Frantz’s parents, the cemetery, and errands around the town. A townsman, Kreutz (Johann von Bulow), asks her to marry him but she recoils as if the idea is incomprehensible, as if she intends to mourn forever. The appearance of the mysterious Adrien slowly changes that but the story does not unfold in the romantic way expected. Adrien is consumed with grief about Frantz but we sense that something is being left unsaid, that there is a secret.
The part of Adrien is played by French actor Pierre Niney, who played fashion designer Yves Saint-Laurent in the 2014 biopic YVES SAINT-LAURENT. Adrien is a mystery from the start – who is he, why is he there – a mystery Anna is eventually drawn to uncover. But Adrien is a tortured soul, complex and confused, and answers do not come easily. The story hints at secrets, and a suggestion of an attraction between Frantz and Adrien is aided by Niney’s sensitive, vulnerable character.
Eventually, the exploration takes Anna to France, where she see the devastation the war on that landscape, and starts to gain insight into the former enemy. The journey reveals surprises about both Frantz and Adrien, and is also one of self-discovery for Anna.
There are several references to the arts in this historical drama, which flourished in the post-war period. Several times, the characters speak of the Louvre, of a particular painting by Manet, and there are beautiful visual references, in a walk to a lake, to German Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich. Music is a strong theme, something both Frantz and Adrien loved. A talented musician, Adrien says he has lost the will to play, but then plays Frantz’s violin for parents and talks about helping Frantz improve his playing.
One of the themes in this film is that of lies and secrets. Lies can take various forms, including the white lie told out of kindness, or the lies told to the grieving to soften the loss. Wars and the grief they create are a natural fit for half-truths around a death. There are also the lies one tells oneself or tells others to evade responsibility or a truth about oneself. Storytelling is another sort of lie, as the film notes, as are the imagined images in paintings, both invented scenes yet revealing truth.
FRANTZ is a complex, thought-provoking film and an impressive work of cinema art that is also a satisfying film experience.
*** Palm Springs International Film Festival 2011 – Opening Night Film ***
*** Venice Film Festival 2010 – Official Selection ***
*** Toronto International Film Festival 2010 – Official Selection ***
OPENING IN LOS ANGELES AND NEW YORK ON MARCH 25
In French, a potiche is a vase or decorative object of little value and no real practical use that you put on a shelf or a mantel. The word is also used in everyday language as a derogatory term for a woman who is considered eye candy, or a woman living in the shadow of her husband who doesn’t seem to have her own identity. Certain wives of politicians, or even certain female politicians themselves, have been called “potiches”, including Madame Chirac, or more recently, Ségolène Royal.
Set in 1977 in a provincial French town, POTICHE is a free adaptation of the 1970s eponymous hit comic play. Catherine Deneuve is Suzanne Pujol, a submissive, housebound ‘trophy housewife’ (or “potiche,”) who steps in to manage the umbrella factory run by her wealthy and tyrannical husband (Fabrice Luchini) after the workers go on strike and take him hostage. To everyone’s surprise, Suzanne proves herself a competent and assertive woman of action. But when her husband returns from a restful cruise in top form, things get complicated. Gérard Depardieu plays a former union leader and Suzanne’s ex-beau who still holds a flame for her. Acclaimed writer-director Francois Ozon (“Swimming Pool,” “Under the Sand,” “Time to Leave,”) who had previously directed Ms. Deneuve in the international hit “8 Women,” twists the original play on its head to create his own satirical and hilarious take on the war between the sexes and classes.
POTICHE reunites French cinema legends Catherine Deneuve and Gérard Depardieu in an ensemble cast that includes comic greats Fabrice Luchini and Karin Viard (as Luchini’s secretary and mistress,) while Judith Godreche and Jérémie Renier play the Pujols’ entitled daughter and sexually ambiguous son. The impeccable 1970s era set design and costumes, were created by Katia Wyzkop and Pascaline Chavanne, respectively.
POTICHE OPENS IN LOS ANGELES AND NEW YORK ON MARCH 25
