One of European cinema’s most feted auteur directors pays inspired homage to the godfather of transgressively queer art-house cinema in Peter Von Kant, François Ozon’s gender-flipped remake of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s classic chamber piece The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant (1972). While the French director mostly opts for tragicomic farce over the late German hellraiser’s operatic melodrama, both films explore the sadomasochistic power relations that lie behind love and desire, youth and beauty. A few more of the fabulous wigs featured in the original production would have been welcome, but otherwise this is an absorbing and inventive reframing of a much-loved cult movie.
Billed as a “free adaptation”, Peter Von Kant honours its source material without being overly reverential. At 54, Ozon is twice the age Fassbinder was when he shot The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant, which may explain why this elegant remake feels a little less hysterically extreme, a little more humane and merciful. A strong choice of opening film for the Berlinale’s post-pandemic comeback, Ozon’s stylish glam-rock cover version will enjoy plenty of critical buzz and connoisseur interest based on the reputations of both directors, even if it lacks the obvious populist allure of earlier breakout hits like 8 Women (2002) and Swimming Pool (2003).
Ozon has forged long associations with both Fassbinder and Berlin over the years. His adaptation of another Fassbinder stage play, Water Drops on Burning Rocks (2000) won the LBGTQ-themed Teddy award at the Berlinale 22 years ago, while the starry all-women ensemble cast of 8 Women (2002) shared the festival’s Silver Bear acting prize two years later. Both directors draw fruitfully and knowingly on golden-era Hollywood greats like Douglas Sirk and George Cukor, especially their heavily stylised sound-stage glamour, coded queerness and deliciously bitchy female dramas.
While Fassbinder’s single-set drama was more or less contemporary, Ozon’s retro homage is a period piece set in the same era, 1972, in a roomy bohemian apartment in Cologne. In place of Margit Carstensen’s icy performance as tyrannical uber-diva fashion designer Petra, burly French actor Denis Ménochet delivers a wide-ranging, steam-belching, screen-filling star turn as Peter, a champagne-guzzling, cocaine-snorting, hot-tempered film-maker closely modelled on Fassbinder himself. This artful meshing of author with text is mischievous, but it sits well with Fassbinder’s own fondness for thinly disguised autobiography, frequently casting his friends and lovers on screen.
Indeed, Petra’s sadistically downtrodden housekeeper Marlene in the original film was played in a dialogue-free role by Fassbinder’s first wife Irm Hermann, and their off-screen abusive relationship mirrored her cold-hearted treatment on screen. In Ozon’s reboot, Marlene is reborn as Peter’s eternally victimised manservant Karl, a tour de force of wordless deadpan comedy from Stéfan Crépon that combines balletic grace, high-camp body language, hilarious shade-throwing glares and joyfully absurd facial hair. Think Mister Bean directed by Wes Anderson.
Peter Von Kant is a full 40 minutes shorter than Fassbinder’s original, but the essential narrative arc remains largely intact. Still smarting from the messy collapse of a recent love affair, Peter welcomes a visit from his singer-actor friend and sometime screen muse Sidonie (Isabelle Adjani in deliciously glossy diva mode). Sidonie introduces him to Amir (Khalil Gharbia), a young aspiring actor blessed with radiant beauty and an Adonis-like body. Inevitably, Peter is instantly bewitched by Amir, offering him film roles and a champagne lifestyle in return for sex and love, or at least a performative charade of romance.
Amir spots his big chance and agrees to Peter’s advances, but this torrid transactional arrangement cannot last. As the months pass, Peter becomes increasingly paranoid and jealous, while Amir starts to enjoy the power of being a much-admired sex object and rising star. Though he humours Peter with lukewarm affirmations of love, he cheats on him both emotionally and physically, cruelly flaunting his hot trysts with other men. When the inevitable split comes, Peter explodes into self-pitying rage, lashing out at friends and family, including his long-suffering mother Rosemarie (Hanna Schygulla).
Of course, Ozon’s casting of veteran German screen queen Schygulla plots a direct line back to Fassbinder’s original. Arguably the most famous of the late director’s regular female muses, she co-starred in the 1972 film as Karin, the blueprint for Amir, a vacant young beauty whose ambivalent affections gradually reduce Petra from imperious diva to grovelling, heartbroken wreck. Schygulla’s maternal presence here, soothing her overgrown baby son with saintly patience and sweet lullabies, softens Fassbinder’s tortuous portrait of dysfunctional love into something more tender and redemptive. Behind the surface plot details Ozon appears to be proposing some kind of posthumous meta-drama here, a closing of the circle, a teasing counterfactual speculation on how the real Fassbinder might have lived a more productive, less destructive life with a little more kindness and moderation.
Bookended with archive photos of the real Fassbinder and Schygulla, Peter Von Kant is both love letter and affectionate critique of a pre Me Too era when revered directors could get away with being monstrous, sadistic, sexually manipulative egotists. As ever with Ozon, the visuals are sumptuous, with cinematographer Manu Dacosse playing artfully with grainy retro textures and colours. That said, production designer Katia Wyszkop and costume chief Pascaline Chavanne resist the temptation to indulge in an orgiastic fantasy of Seventies fashions, opting instead for an aesthetic closer to Fassbinder’s own mix of glitzy glamour with lowlife grit. Fassbinder buffs will enjoy spotting allusions to his canon scattered throughout the film, most obviously to Ali: Fear Eats The Soul in the Amir character alongside more subtle nods to Love Is Colder Than Death, The Marriage of Maria Braun, Berlin Alexanderplatz and more.
Director, producer, screenwriter: François Ozon, adapted from the play and film by Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Cast: Denis Ménochet, Isabelle Adjani, Khalil Gharbia, Hanna Schygulla, Stéfan Crépon
Cinematography: Manu Dacosse
Editing: Laure Gardette
Music: Clément Ducol
Production design: Katia Wyszkop
Costume design: Pascaline Chavanne
Co-Producers: Valérie Boyer, Sébastien Beffa, Nicolas Brigaud-Robert, François Yon, Geneviève Lemal
Production companies: France 2 Cinema (France), Playtime (France), Scope Pictures (Belgium)
World sales: Playtime
Venue: Berlin International Film Festival (Competition, opening film)
In French, German
84 minutes
