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François Ozon with Katell Quillévéré (Réparer Les Vivants) and Emmanuelle Bercot (La Fille De Brest) Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

A highlight of the Rendez-Vous with French Cinema in New York, Frantz (César winner - Best Cinematography to Pascal Marti) is François Ozon's inspired take on Ernst Lubitsch’s 1932 post-World War I drama Broken Lullaby, which tells the story of a French soldier, here called Adrien (Pierre Niney) who locates the family of a German soldier, Frantz (Anton von Lucke) who died at the front.

Based on the play by Maurice Rostand, Ozon switches perspective to that of the grieving fiancée Anna (Paula Beer), an orphan living with Frantz's parents (Ernst Stötzner and Marie Gruber). A painting by Manet of a pale young man, head back, that hangs in the Louvre triggers a variety of Carlotta moments. Cyrielle Clair as Adrien's mother would be perfectly at home in a lineup of dangerous Alfred Hitchcock matriarchs.

"What would the truth bring?" "Only more pain." Music Box Films has released a new official Us trailer for the indie film Frantz, the latest film from prolific French director François Ozon. This played at the Venice and Telluride Film Festival last fall to very positive reviews, and it also played at the Sundance Film Festival this January. Frantz is set after Wwi, but before WWII, in Germany with a story about two people who connect after the first Great War. French actor Pierre Niney, star of the biopic Yves Saint Laurent, plays the French man who comes to a small German town and places flowers on the grave of a deceased man named Frantz. There he meets Frantz's widow Anna, played by German actress Paula Beer. Also starring Ernst Stötzner, Marie Gruber, Johann von Bülow, Anton von Lucke & Cyrielle Clair. See below. Here's the official Us trailer (+ poster) for Francois Ozon's Frantz,...

Franz

Director: François Ozon

Writer: François Ozon

Ex-terrible enfant is a perennial favorite on the festival circuit (2015 was only the third year in the past fifteen years of filmmaking where François Ozon didn’t unveil a new title). His prolific output sees him unveiling at a variety of prestigious festivals, having competed twice at Cannes (2003, 2013), four times in Berlin, and twice in Venice. His latest was 2014’s The New Girlfriend, a playful if rather anachronistic narrative featuring outmoded psychological presentations of gender identity (it premiered in Toronto, another platform Ozon has been known to premiere at). In time for 2016, Ozon has been working on a historical drama, the German co-production Franz, headlined by recent Cesar winner Pierre Niney (Yves Saint Laurent). As usual, confirmations of the exact narrative have been kept under wraps by Ozon.

Cast: Pierre Niney, Paula Beer, Cyrielle Claire

Production Co./Producers: Mandarin’s Eric and Nicolas Altmayer,...

While 2014 saw the passing of (reluctant) New Wave icon Alain Resnais, there was an intense resurgence of interest in the directorial efforts of Last Year at Marienbad (1961) scribe Alain Robbe-Grillet. Grillet and Resnais would never collaborate again, but it left the screenwriter with his own directorial options, which he used to explore his abstract fetishes in a filmography that would span ten films, many of which never made it to the United States. Kino Lorber’s Redemption label resurrected five rare titles for Blu-ray over the past year, including his 1963 debut L’immortelle and New Wave classic Trans-Europ-Express (1967). But it would be Grillet’s eighth feature that would serve to be his most internationally renowned, the 1983 La Belle Captive, which chanteys its way into Blu-ray this month courtesy of Olive Films. No more cohesive than any of the other puzzling titles in his filmography, the stunning work from DoP Henri Alekan...