ReviewBerlin 2022: Peter von Kant movie review – Francois Ozon’s take on Fassbinder’s The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant is unnervingly apt for the post-MeToo era
- French director Francois Ozon makes a raucous return to the 2022 Berlin International Film Festival with his remake of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 1972 film
- Ozon offers an explosive exploration of creativity, power and loneliness. Denis Ménochet gives a titanic performance in the lead role
4/5 stars
Francois Ozon opens this year’s Berlin International Film Festival in raucous style with Peter von Kant. The French director, who won the Golden Bear at the festival with 2018’s By The Grace of God, which skewers the Catholic Church, is back with the second adaptation of a Rainer Werner Fassbinder work in his career.
The first, Water Drops on Burning Rocks, arrived in 2000 – it was just his third feature – and feels rather quaint in comparison to this explosive exploration of creativity, power and loneliness.
Taking on The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, Fassbinder’s 1972 film about a fashion designer and her muse, Ozon twists it on its head. “Petra” becomes Peter, a successful but savage film director played with monstrous energy by Denis Ménochet (Inglorious Basterds).
Set almost entirely in his quarters, where he is attended to by his silent, mustachioed assistant Karl (Stefan Crepon), the film finds him working on his latest opus, “a portrait of a woman” as he reveals.
Visited by Sidonie (Isabelle Adjani), a glamorous actress whose blown-up black-and-white photo adorns his louche apartment, he is introduced to the handsome young Amir (Khalil Ben Gharbia). Before long, he is promising him a role in his new film, a precursor to them jumping in bed together.