THREE AND 1/2 STARS
It is difficult to define the career of François Ozon; It is difficult to define François Ozon. His films can be romantic and stylized melodramas (Frantz), tragedies (Under the Sand, perhaps still his best work), brilliant comedies (8 Women) or a mixture of all of these. What prevails in any case is the idea of a mystery that structures the world in which his characters live, a world that owes a lot to theater.
Although his cinema is not, precisely, “filmed theater”, but something else, a recognition of what the stage gave to cinema. That crime… (like Potiche, like 8 women) is a vaudeville with a murder in the middle that takes place in the 1930s and in the world of entertainment. That is, the natural environment for the game of simulations and back and forth.
The great weight – and also the greatest talent of this capricious director but in search of enjoyment – is in the direction of actors, and they are the ones who sustain the game from beginning to end, from the untalented actress played by Nadia Terieszkiewicz to the intervention by the always successful Fabrice Lucchini.
The word “game” is intentional: the idea that cinema or theater are playful opportunities for the viewer and that from there ideas can be communicated. With its ups and downs – not everything is perfect, by the way -, a small search for happiness.
