Frantz (film)

Frantz is a 2016 drama film directed and co-written by François Ozon and starring Paula Beer and Pierre Niney.

It was selected to compete for the Golden Lion at the 73rd Venice International Film Festival,[2] where Beer won the Marcello Mastroianni Award.

[4] Frantz is a loose adaptation of the 1932 Ernst Lubitsch film Broken Lullaby,[5] which in turn was based on Maurice Rostand's 1930 French play L'homme que j'ai tué.

In Quedlinburg, Germany, in 1919, Anna, a young German woman grieving over the death of her fiancé, Frantz Hoffmeister, in World War I, leaves flowers at his grave.

Adrien found Frantz's last letter to Anna on his body and, racked with guilt, resolved to visit Germany in order to seek forgiveness.

In reality, however, she decides that it is better for them to remain in ignorance of Adrien's role after they have come to like him and see him as a connection to their lost son.

After being nursed back to health by the Hoffmeisters, Anna's spirits gradually recover and she decides to contact Adrien again.

Ty Burr of The Boston Globe said, "Frantz is pleasurable slow going, developing its themes at an amble but with a measure of suspense, sympathy toward its characters, and a lasting faith in filmmaking craft.

The website's critical consensus states: "Frantz finds writer-director François Ozon thoughtfully probing the aftermath of World War I through the memories and relationships of loved ones left behind.