” For me, it’s like a dream to be there, 50 years after Fassbinder… “, admitted François Ozon during the world premiere at the Berlinale 2022. This Wednesday, July 6, peter von kant, released in theaters in France. A modern adaptation of The bitter tears of Petra von Kanta play by the cult German artist Rainer Werner Fassbinder which the latter had himself adapted in 1972 for the cinema.
In François Ozon’s film, it all starts with Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s horn glasses, highlighting both the strength and the weaknesses of the German filmmaker. And it all ends with an archive photo showing Fassbinder with his favorite actress Hanna Schygulla. At no time does the French director hide his admiration for this monument of German cinema. Which did not prevent him from changing all the roles of the original film. Petra von Kant, the fashion designer as famous as she is cruel, becomes at Ozon Peter von Kant, an authoritarian, narcissistic director at the height of his glory. And the impressive work of Denis Ménochet on his role of Peter leaves little doubt about the autobiographical aspect of this character for Fassbinder: the same face, the same look both curious and haunted, the same gestures, the same body both frail and animal, endowed with artistic, childish and libidinous thoughts.
Ozon and Fassbinder, a certain quest for the truth on the big screen
The “free adaptation” of Fassbinder’s play remains above all Ozon. A very neat and at the same time warm image with a very 1970s aesthetic, a subtle framing faithful to the theatrical spirit of the work, with fluid transitions driven by emotions, and an intelligent use of stars emphasizing winks. look at the history of the seventh art.
It is with the adaptation of another play by Fassbinder, Water drops on hot stones, which François Ozon had broken through in the cinema, in 2000, at the Berlinale. Since then, he has shared with the former enfant terrible of German cinema above all a certain quest for the truth on the big screen. But also the detection by image of hypocrisies in everyday life. Like his idol, Ozon assumes this role of proven and privileged observer of the battle of feelings made visible by cinematographic X-rays. Both officiate as masters in this societal arena where audacity and ambition, certainties and conventions kill each other.
Hanna Schygulla and Isabelle Adjani
” Jeder tötet, was er liebt » (« Everyone kills what they love “), sung in German by Isabelle Adjani, this song serves as a guide in this acidic and sensitive exploration of the structures of love and power. peter von kant brings together Hanna Schygulla, ensuring direct affiliation with the cinema of Fassbinder, an Isabelle Adjani practicing self-irony for her role as the diva Sidonie, as well as Denis Ménochet embodying the alter ego of the German filmmaker, characterized by the intoxication of his sentimental excesses.
► To listen also: French actress Isabelle Adjani in “Peter Von Kant”
In Ozon’s film, Peter von Kant is omnipresent. Her new lover, Amir (Khalil Gharbia), propelled usefully as an actor in the next film, bursts the screen with his beauty. Diva Sidonie (Isabelle Adjani) ingeniously occupies the viewer’s mind. In the adaptation of the French director, there is talk of a film project about a German actress after the Second World War. A pretext to evoke the personal history of Fassbinder. Born in May 1945, a few days after the military and moral capitulation of Germany, he has never ceased to explore in his work the subterraneans and taboos of German history. From his anger transformed into images, he created a whole cinematographic architecture to dissect this German society in which he was long considered an outsider. And it is precisely with his visceral and out-of-system passions and reflections that he undermined the good conscience of the post-war period.
A mirror portrait of the director
All this does not appear in peter von kant. Ozon is content to adapt the piece to merge it with a mirror portrait of the director. Ozon approaches the autobiographical dimension of the original piece, but at the same time moves away from the power and radicality made possible by a more distanced treatment… Along the way, he loses the thickness of this major figure of the German cinema. The subject is still there, but Peter von Kant remains locked in the person of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, without worrying German society, politics or history.
Suddenly, the most interesting role is surprisingly embodied with virtuosity by Karl (Stefan Crepon), serving him servile until submission. He is the handyman in the service of the tyrannical director: put on the boots, bring the champagne, hold the telephone receiver during his master’s conversation, co-write the scripts, serve as a stress relief…
Karl, the coveted role of the revolutionary
Throughout the film, Karl doesn’t say a word, but through his silhouette, his gaze, his gestures, his hesitations, his shining eyes or his clenched jaw, we understand everything, and everything about the others too. It’s like the silence between the notes, without it there’s no music, no accents, no decay. It is the background of the image that will engulf all the main characters in the painting. It is he who will ultimately occupy the coveted role of the revolutionary and defender of the absolute truth that everyone claims to hold and embody, both in life and in cinema. By looking at others in an absolute and introverted way, he draws us into his gaze – without complacency, without pity. A real Fassbinderian look.
And then there’s Hanna Schygulla. The former muse of Rainer Werner Fassbinder who played in the original play “the little whore”, that is to say the role of Karl in the film by Ozon, plays fifty years after Peter’s “Mutti”. A failing mother, she takes the blame, but remains the mistress of her son’s sentimental world, even forty years after his birth. When it drops, she’ll be there, with a lullaby, Schlaf Kindlein schlaf(“ Sleep, my little one, sleep “), sung in German by Hanna Schygulla, deploying her Fassbinderian soul. Ozon films her against the light at night, like an angel, with her long gray hair giving her a white halo. A cinematographic apotheosis in honor of Fassbinder’s universe.