PETER VON KANT
| 2022 – 86′ – Drama
Written by: François Ozon
Based on the film by: Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Directed by François Ozon.
Starring Denis Ménochet, Isabelle Adjani, Khalil Gharbia, Hanna Schygulla, Stefan Crepon, Aminthe Audiard.
World Premiere at the Berlin Internernation Film Festival 2022 (Opening film).
Official Selection The American French Film Festival 2022.
In French and German with English subtitles.
A Strand Releasing Films release.|
François Ozon cleverly turns the tables on his idol — the larger-than-life catalyst of ’70s New German Cinema, Rainer Werner Fassbinder — by casting him as the protagonist in his own story. “Freely adapted” from Fassbinder’s 1972 campy melodrama, The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, Peter von Kant takes that agonizing tale of three women trapped in a toxic love triangle and gives it a sex change. Whereas Petra was a tortured fashion designer, posing in ornate gowns and wigs, Peter is another kind of diva — a volatile, doped-up, boozer of a film director who clearly resembles Fassbinder himself. True to form, the object of Peter’s desire is an exquisite young thing named Amir Ben-Salem. The ever-sublime Hannah Schygulla (the shimmering object of Petra’s lust in the original film) even turns up as Peter’s consoling mother. But for all the film’s self-referential adulation and exuberance, it’s Denis Ménochet’s fearless, powerhouse performance that pushes it beyond the mere exercise of revealing an artist through his own creation, and breathes life into the ultimately tragic, horrifying, incredibly fragile soul of the artist himself.