The question of whether François Ozon’s film “Peter von Kant” is the right work to open the Berlinale became superfluous for the time being, at the latest with the appearance of Hanna Schygulla. She plays Rosemarie, the mother of the unhappily loving director Peter von Kant. But because the film, as the opening credits say, is not just a “free adaptation” of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s drama “The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant” (1972). , in which Schygulla starred, but rather as a film after Fassbinder a movie over Fassbinder, the audience at the preview welcomes the appearance of Fassbinder diva Schygulla with an exclamation of respect and emotion.
These 72nd film festivals were longed for and defended like never before, understandably they are controversial from a Corona point of view. In these discussions, the reunion with the greats of film history offers comfort and support. Especially since Ozon’s film is such an unconditional declaration of love for Fassbinder and German film, yes, for Germany in general, that it almost takes on fetish-like traits. Like Fassbinder’s film, this one takes place in Cologne in 1972. Peter von Kant wears lederhosen and reads the star and says “Cheers”. German hits come from the turntable. And at some point Schygulla sings “Sleep, child, sleep”.
Director François Ozon at the opening of the Berlinale on Thursday. He is a regular at the festival.
(Photo: Britta Pedersen/dpa)
From the play of a fashion designer (Margit Carstensen), who falls in love with a younger woman (Schygulla), is abandoned and realizes that she only ever wanted to own, Ozon made the story of the director Peter von Kant (Denis Ménochet), who falls in love with the Arabic-born Amir (Khalil Gharbia), is abandoned and realizes that “beautiful love” doesn’t exist. At least not in real life. In the end, the abandoned one sits in tears – the men cry a lot in this film – next to the film projector and looks at the beautiful ex-one on the screen. “The beautiful, pure love without procreation” that Peter von Kant dreams of does of course exist – in the cinema.
A portrait of the delicate artist who unfortunately was a manipulative pig
Even more: In one scene, the suspicion arises that the camera even offers the better sex. Amir talks about his parents, about the father who killed his mother and himself because after his release he saw no place for himself in the world. You can see how difficult it is for him to talk about it. At first Peter has him filmed by his servant Karl (Stefan Crepon), who lustfully lets his master treat him badly. But then he snatches the camera from his hand and shoots Amir himself. It’s an act of exposure, even penetration.
From the very first image, Ozon leaves no doubt that Fassbinder is what he is talking about in this portrait of the delicate artist, who unfortunately was a manipulative swine. In the opening credits you can see the piercing eyes, the quotes range from photos on the wall to the blazing colors of the artist’s apartment, reminiscent of the great melo master Douglas Sirk, but also of Fassbinder’s gay and sailor drama “Querelle”. .
Ménochet plays Peter von Kant as a giant baby who is moved by his own depth of feeling and visually becomes more and more like the real Fassbinder. While the original mainly shows claustrophobic bombast, “Peter von Kant” offers Ozone-typical music numbers and even humor. Peter von Kant snaps at his girlfriend Sidonie, played by Isabelle Adjani, whether she slept with Amir. She then bursts out laughing: “Everyone slept with Amir.”
Isabelle Adjani is a gift for this film anyway. If Fassbinder stood for the art of expressing the greatest realism of feelings through the greatest artificiality, then he would have found a new diva in the coking, posing, bumbling Adjani.
Fassbinder’s unfulfilled love was the actor Günther Kaufmann, the son of a German mother and an Afro-American black man, and even “The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant” was seen as a tale of this passion. In Ozon, love is explicitly reflected in different skin colors, through the actor with Arabic roots, Khalil Gharbia, and Amir’s affair with a black man, which drives Peter mad with jealousy.
But the references are biographical, not political. Ozone is not the director of race or gender commentary. So “Peter von Kant” remains a nicely equipped, flokati-fluffy, comfortably shocking love story, and the question of whether this hard-fought Berlinale could not have used an opening with more edge. The longing for hard films for hard times is increasing.