Frantz - Movie Reviews (2025)

The use of black-and-white and the occasional shift to color are more than gimmicks. They relay tone and mood from the director, but more importantly perspective from the characters.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Aug 20, 2022

Ozon modernizes the Merchant Ivory in swell ways, too - it might be a chaste movie but his queer heart beats hard under all of those stiff uniforms. Fassbinderian flatness and absurdity peeks around every corner

Full Review | Jan 14, 2022

Relative newcomer Paula Beer should unquestionably have filmmakers knocking on her door after her performance here.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4.0 | Sep 8, 2020

Disguised as period costumes and sumptuous monochrome cinematography that bursts in to color in pivotal moments, but the film holds some sinister undertones of lost innocence and pain/joy of growing up.

Full Review | Jul 17, 2020

These mood swings make this costume drama very much of the moment.

Full Review | Jun 8, 2020

It's a quietly devastating work that follows an unpredictable and touching path that teaches us a great deal about grieving and learning to live again.

Full Review | May 6, 2020

For Ozon, Frantz is an intriguing change of pace, a period piece in another language, and with straightforward but evident depth... But you'll be hard pressed to remember much about it beyond the stirring presence of Paula Beer.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 2, 2019

Few films can announce themselves as succinctly with an opening image as Frantz does.

Full Review | Aug 6, 2019

A beautifully crafted, yet somehow distant work that is deeply moving at times, cold at others.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 4, 2019

Frantz swings the audience constantly between hope and despair for its characters thanks to a combination of winning performances, clever plotting, and stunning visuals. It's a pleasure to watch from beginning to end.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 5, 2019

As usual, Ozon was solid behind the camera in a classic (re)tale about remorse, forgiveness, and passion.

Full Review | Feb 1, 2019

The film does not continue in a conventional trajectory. It becomes Anna's story of self-discovery and will to live. It's haunting.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 3, 2018

Strains credibility towards the end, but the performances, by [Paula] Beer especially, are first class.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 23, 2018

A decent film, but call me crazy for wanting "Frantz" to be better than decent.

Full Review | Aug 21, 2018

Using a structure that turns the film into a game of mirrors that constantly reveals new perspectives and unexpected depths... Ozon conducts an intimately epic examination... [Full review in Spanish

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 30, 2018

Although Frantz' plot suffers from a lack of clarity, it's undeniable that the contemplations regarding female dynamics are worthy of applause. [Full Review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 6, 2018

Because Frantz is 99.9 percent domestic, ponderously paced, shot in black and white . . . it plays like a film version of an Anton Chekhov short story.

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | Jan 16, 2018

The filmmaker carries out a successful appropriation. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | Jan 9, 2018

A remake of a not very well known film by Lubitsch, Remordimiento (1932), in turn based on a theatrical piece by Maurice Rostand. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jan 8, 2018

Frantz depicts how inevitably some measure of healing and progress is necessary for these survivors, however imperfectly plotted their steps forward.

Full Review | Dec 19, 2017