31/01/2017

Venice Film Festival 2016: Frantz: An interview with Paula Beer









What was your reaction to the script?
It’s exciting to read a script when you know you’ll be playing a particular character. I was extremely moved by the story and the important themes it touches upon – honesty, love, loss, lies, letting go, determination, the will to live – all subtly rendered, with a palpable feeling of vulnerability and yet a certain lightness seeping into the friendship between Anna and Adrien, adding to its complexity. Anna’s personal growth is amazing. In the beginning she’s a quiet person who, after the death of her fiancé, is kind of adrift. When she meets Adrien, she rediscovers the joie de vivre she’d felt before Frantz died and truly blooms, making the blow delivered when she learns the truth hurt all the more. Then, in the second part of the story, she goes on to develop remarkable strength. I was so happy to play this wonderful role.

                                              



How did you prepare to play a character who learns about love and becomes a woman?
Anna evolves a great deal in the story, so it was important for me to understand the different stages she’s going through. How did the war change her life? What was she like before? What is Adrien’s effect on her? What desires is he awakening? It was critical for me to understand her relationships with those around her, the pain she’d felt since Frantz died and, in contrast, her desire to live and love again.




One important stage for Anna begins when Adrien tells her the truth.
Yes, and it’s an unimaginable shock for her. She decides to spare her in-laws that pain and carries the burden of the lie and the heavy responsibility that comes with it all on her own. It’s a crucial moment that raises many questions. Why is she protecting Adrien?






Indeed, Anna is the only one who reaches a point where she embraces the truth and confronts her desires. Do you think Adrien, too, is finally ready to accept the truth of their feelings for each other?

I really wonder whether Anna still desires him. I’m not sure. I think she’s grown up too much for Adrien. He sparked her desire, she was moved by him, she fell in love and embarked on a long journey to find him again. In fact, her journey was so long she went past him! Of course when she finds Adrien’s family she’s happy to see him again, but something doesn’t quite gel between them. Adrien is stuck in his situation, he’s not strong enough to get out. And Anna has her life to live.




Frantz is a moving film, shot (mostly) in black and white, and it tells the story of Anna who falls in love with Adrien. Adrien is the Frenchman who visits the grave of Frantz, who fell in the last days of the Great War, Anna's husband to be. Adrien claims to be a friend of Frantz from before the war. He befriends Anna and Frantz' parents, who consider him as the returned son and the perfect husband for Anna. But Adrien can't hide the truth from Anna and tells his real intentions: to be forgiven. For he has met Frantz only once, face to face, in the trenches and in a reflex killed the German. Anna is in shock, but when she recovers, she travels to a devastated France to search for Adrien to find out that...it's too late. Trop tard. The film explores the romantic (Germany) and the rational (France), truth and fiction. I wonder whether the painting by Edouard Manet of a suicide, which gives Anna the strength to carry on, was ever at the Louvre for an exhibit then.
 Love, remorse, forgiveness, mourning are the themes of this beautiful film, with great performances by Paula Beer as Anna and Pierre Niney as Adrien. 




César nominations for Frantz, a.o.

best actor : Pierre Niney
promising actress  : Paula Beer.
best adaptation, best director : 
François Ozon
best film:  Frantz





Le suicide, 1887      Edouard Manet

        



On April 12, 1866, at his home at 7 rue Turgot, Jules Holtzapfel committed suicide, shooting himself in the head. In his published suicide note, the Austrian painter wrote: “The members of the [Salon] jury have rejected me. I therefore have no talent. . . . I must die!”



The 'grim' nature of the work resides in the grisly details - the vast puddle of blood at the foot of the bed and on the victim's white shirt, his dinner jacket strewn upon the floor, and his lifeless hand weighed down by the large revolver. His gaping mouth seems to gasp for air, an alarming detail that suggests that the victim may not have successfully completed the act. He currently lies in an agonizing physical and spiritual state of limbo. Through the haphazard brushwork and the contorted position of the victim, Manet heightens the experiential nature of the masochistic act; the painting appears as a filmic episode unfolding before our eyes, forcing us to ponder, minute by minute, the circumstances that drove this man to attempt self-annihilation.

 Manet.org


Wikipedia 


The painting is in the collection of  E.G.Bührle


Foundation E.G. Bührle


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