フランソワ・オゾンの官能的な映画のガイド

Provocative and prolific, François Ozon has directed 23 full-length features in 26 years, usually with a solo screenplay credit, too. What’s more, the 57-year-old French auteur is versatile: no two Ozon films are alike, except that they all showcase his trademark mischievousness, often with an icon of French cinema in the ensemble. After all, Ozon is an actor’s filmmaker whose playful, stylised mise-en-scène pushes performers – his regulars include Isabelle Huppert and Catherine Deneuve – into new emotional, heightened dimensions. It’s no surprise, then, that Timothée Chalamet has proclaimed that his dream collaboration would be with Ozon.

As for what a new Ozon will look and sound like, it’s a lottery. It could be a Technicolor musical (8 Women) or a black-and-white WWII period drama (Frantz); an incestuous, taboo-breaking farce (Sitcom) or a sensitive depiction of abuse within the Catholic Church (By the Grace of God); a grounded drama about divorce (5×2) or a fantasy about a baby who grows wings and flies (Ricky). Whatever the genre, though, Ozon fully commits. Last year, it was The Crime Is Mine, an over-the-top screwball caper set in the 1930s. His latest, When Autumn Falls, is another U-turn: a poignant drama about ageing, loneliness, and – because it’s Ozon – murder.

Smart, heartfelt and possessing a sinister edge, When Autumn Falls stars Hélène Vincent as Michelle, a retiree who is denied access to her grandson after an accident involving poisonous mushrooms. While even the most hardened cinephile couldn’t predict the plot twists, the film’s real selling point is the long-awaited reunion between Ozon and Ludivine Sagnier, who last collaborated 22 years ago on Swimming Pool. Whereas Sagnier was 21 when she starred in Ozon’s Water Drops on Burning Rocks, here she’s a middle-aged mother whose casting symbolises the depth of the director’s filmography.

As When Autumn Falls lands in UK cinemas, here’s our guide for newcomers to Ozon and his diverse, daunting body of work.

Three films into his career, Ozon was known as an arthouse prankster whose 1999 thriller Criminal Lovers is still cited as a prime example of the New French Extremity movement. All that changed with Under the Sand, a deeply mature meditation on grief starring Charlotte Rampling as Marie, a professor whose husband vanishes when she falls asleep on a beach. Traumatised by the lack of closure, Marie struggles to move on in life, forever paranoid that her almost certainly deceased partner is still waiting to be found – even when a corpse is discovered.

Proving that Ozon was capable of more than shock value, Under the Sand is shaped by memorable, haunting images that convey Marie’s broken state of mind, the most powerful being a sexual encounter with a new man that produces four male hands – two belonging to her dead husband – on Marie’s body. In her first of many Ozon collaborations, Rampling commands the frame with an icy exterior that teases out the vulnerability lurking inside.

The title is a little misleading: it’s actually eight women and a dead man. A queer murder-mystery musical that balances slapstick with sombre songs, 8 Women is Ozon showing off his comedic chops in the most colourful way possible. In the style of Agatha Christie, the exquisite, toe-tapping whodunnit all takes place within a family home, producing eight female suspects who dress like they’re in a Douglas Sirk melodrama. However, the pleasure is in watching French new wave legends bicker like children who also happen to be accused of murder.

The starry cast (Danielle Darrieux, Emmanuelle Béart, Isabelle Huppert and so on) are game for Ozon’s all-singing, all-dancing antics, as well as ludicrous pratfalls that transcend expectations – one example is a fight between Catherine Deneuve and Fanny Ardant that ends with a make-out session on the floor. However, the scene-stealer is Ludivine Sagnier as the pyjama-wearing daughter who possesses all the secrets – and also the catchiest melodies.

Ozon’s international breakthrough was also a classic Ozon thriller that touched on his favourite themes: sexual jealousy, familial dysfunction and the art of writing. In a role redolent of her subtle turn in Under the Sand, Charlotte Rampling stars as Sarah Morton, an English novelist who swaps rainy London for her publisher’s countryside house in France to pen her latest potboiler. Any serenity is soon broken, though, by Ludivine Sagnier as Julie, the publisher’s scantily dressed daughter who brings home a new bedfellow each night, much to Sarah’s apparent disapproval.

When Sarah glares at Julie, is she furious at a spoilt brat for disrupting her writing retreat, or is it a middle-aged woman reliving her youth by proxy? After all, Sarah’s stern glances could be mistaken for voyeurism, which in turn form the catalyst for the film’s Hitchcockian, Rear Window-esque murder subplot. Sensual and slippery, Swimming Pool demonstrates Ozon’s skill for creating suspense from simple scenarios, sometimes just by the placement of a mirror or a rock heavy enough to kill. It’s his most acclaimed film for a reason – the final image will haunt you forever.

Ozon’s 13th film is also his funniest to date. A dialogue-driven comedy shot like a taut, tense thriller, In the House stars Fabrice Luchini as Germain, a creative writing professor whose students lack passion for their craft. Well, except Claude (Ernst Umhauer), a 16-year-old whose assignments are fictional recreations of a fellow student’s middle-class home life. A failed novelist himself, Germain dives into Claude’s fantasies – they oscillate between violent and erotic, often involving Emmanuelle Seigner as the “world’s most bored woman” – while questioning the ethics of using someone else’s life for art.

Germaine is, of course, asking questions that Ozon has as a filmmaker, as well as revelling in the guilty pleasure of finding stories more substantial when they’re based on another person’s reality. Above all, In the House is bursting with wit, its seemingly simple narrative revealing itself to be multilayered: it’s never clear what is or isn’t genuine, other than Germaine’s perverse gratification in a boy’s homework. For bonus humour, there’s Kristin Scott Thomas as Germaine’s wife who finds her own interest in Claude’s writing – and Claude himself.

Opening on a close-up of a vagina that match-cuts to a sideways eyeball with a single tear running down it, L’Amant Double quickly establishes itself as Ozon’s glorious mash-up of David Cronenberg and Brian De Palma: there’s split-screen silliness, kinky sex (including pegging), and vengeful twins competing for the same woman. It may not be Ozon’s most nuanced work, but where else will you find Jérémie Renier as two identical brothers kissing each other in the nude?

Loosely adapted from a Joyce Carol Oates short story, the erotic thriller stars Marine Vacth (so brilliant in Ozon’s 2013 social satire Young and Beautiful) as Chloé, a distressed museum worker who falls in love with her tender therapist, Paul. Problems arise when Chloé cheats on Paul with his twin brother, Louis, another therapist played by Renier whose proposed treatment is aggressive sex. It sounds trashy, and let’s be honest, it is, but Ozon shoots the zaniness with exquisite beauty, squeezing in jaw-dropping dream – or should that be nightmare? – sequences at every opportunity.

As the co-writer of Swimming Pool and 5×2, Emmanuèle Bernheim holds great importance in Ozon’s filmography. After Bernheim’s passing in 2017, Ozon paid tribute by adapting her memoir, Everything Went Fine, a book about her sick father wishing to die while living in France, a country where euthanasia is illegal. The solution proves to be sneaking him out across the border to Switzerland, all while avoiding the police and attempts by the father’s secret gay lover to foil any plans.

On screen, Emmanuèle is depicted by Sophie Marceau with warmth and tenderness, especially in the interactions with her sister, Pascale (Géraldine Pailhas), and their ailing father, André (André Dussollier). Moreover, Everything Went Fine isn’t a dour drama about the ethics of death. In fact, it’s a thriller with real stakes, real people and, ultimately, real heart. Ozon may have built his career on provocations, but here he makes a genuine statement about outdated laws regarding the right to die.

When Autumn Falls is out in UK cinemas now.

Provocative and prolific, François Ozon has directed 23 full-length features in 26 years, usually with a solo screenplay credit, too. What’s more, the 57-year-old French auteur is versatile: no two Ozon films are alike, except that they all showcase his trademark mischievousness, often with an icon of French cinema in the ensemble. After all, Ozon is an actor’s filmmaker whose playful, stylised mise-en-scène pushes performers – his regulars include Isabelle Huppert and Catherine Deneuve – into new emotional, heightened dimensions. It’s no surprise, then, that Timothée Chalamet has proclaimed that his dream collaboration would be with Ozon.

As for what a new Ozon will look and sound like, it’s a lottery. It could be a Technicolor musical (8 Women) or a black-and-white WWII period drama (Frantz); an incestuous, taboo-breaking farce (Sitcom) or a sensitive depiction of abuse within the Catholic Church (By the Grace of God); a grounded drama about divorce (5×2) or a fantasy about a baby who grows wings and flies (Ricky). Whatever the genre, though, Ozon fully commits. Last year, it was The Crime Is Mine, an over-the-top screwball caper set in the 1930s. His latest, When Autumn Falls, is another U-turn: a poignant drama about ageing, loneliness, and – because it’s Ozon – murder.

Smart, heartfelt and possessing a sinister edge, When Autumn Falls stars Hélène Vincent as Michelle, a retiree who is denied access to her grandson after an accident involving poisonous mushrooms. While even the most hardened cinephile couldn’t predict the plot twists, the film’s real selling point is the long-awaited reunion between Ozon and Ludivine Sagnier, who last collaborated 22 years ago on Swimming Pool. Whereas Sagnier was 21 when she starred in Ozon’s Water Drops on Burning Rocks, here she’s a middle-aged mother whose casting symbolises the depth of the director’s filmography.

As When Autumn Falls lands in UK cinemas, here’s our guide for newcomers to Ozon and his diverse, daunting body of work.

Three films into his career, Ozon was known as an arthouse prankster whose 1999 thriller Criminal Lovers is still cited as a prime example of the New French Extremity movement. All that changed with Under the Sand, a deeply mature meditation on grief starring Charlotte Rampling as Marie, a professor whose husband vanishes when she falls asleep on a beach. Traumatised by the lack of closure, Marie struggles to move on in life, forever paranoid that her almost certainly deceased partner is still waiting to be found – even when a corpse is discovered.

Proving that Ozon was capable of more than shock value, Under the Sand is shaped by memorable, haunting images that convey Marie’s broken state of mind, the most powerful being a sexual encounter with a new man that produces four male hands – two belonging to her dead husband – on Marie’s body. In her first of many Ozon collaborations, Rampling commands the frame with an icy exterior that teases out the vulnerability lurking inside.

The title is a little misleading: it’s actually eight women and a dead man. A queer murder-mystery musical that balances slapstick with sombre songs, 8 Women is Ozon showing off his comedic chops in the most colourful way possible. In the style of Agatha Christie, the exquisite, toe-tapping whodunnit all takes place within a family home, producing eight female suspects who dress like they’re in a Douglas Sirk melodrama. However, the pleasure is in watching French new wave legends bicker like children who also happen to be accused of murder.

The starry cast (Danielle Darrieux, Emmanuelle Béart, Isabelle Huppert and so on) are game for Ozon’s all-singing, all-dancing antics, as well as ludicrous pratfalls that transcend expectations – one example is a fight between Catherine Deneuve and Fanny Ardant that ends with a make-out session on the floor. However, the scene-stealer is Ludivine Sagnier as the pyjama-wearing daughter who possesses all the secrets – and also the catchiest melodies.

Ozon’s international breakthrough was also a classic Ozon thriller that touched on his favourite themes: sexual jealousy, familial dysfunction and the art of writing. In a role redolent of her subtle turn in Under the Sand, Charlotte Rampling stars as Sarah Morton, an English novelist who swaps rainy London for her publisher’s countryside house in France to pen her latest potboiler. Any serenity is soon broken, though, by Ludivine Sagnier as Julie, the publisher’s scantily dressed daughter who brings home a new bedfellow each night, much to Sarah’s apparent disapproval.

When Sarah glares at Julie, is she furious at a spoilt brat for disrupting her writing retreat, or is it a middle-aged woman reliving her youth by proxy? After all, Sarah’s stern glances could be mistaken for voyeurism, which in turn form the catalyst for the film’s Hitchcockian, Rear Window-esque murder subplot. Sensual and slippery, Swimming Pool demonstrates Ozon’s skill for creating suspense from simple scenarios, sometimes just by the placement of a mirror or a rock heavy enough to kill. It’s his most acclaimed film for a reason – the final image will haunt you forever.

Ozon’s 13th film is also his funniest to date. A dialogue-driven comedy shot like a taut, tense thriller, In the House stars Fabrice Luchini as Germain, a creative writing professor whose students lack passion for their craft. Well, except Claude (Ernst Umhauer), a 16-year-old whose assignments are fictional recreations of a fellow student’s middle-class home life. A failed novelist himself, Germain dives into Claude’s fantasies – they oscillate between violent and erotic, often involving Emmanuelle Seigner as the “world’s most bored woman” – while questioning the ethics of using someone else’s life for art.

Germaine is, of course, asking questions that Ozon has as a filmmaker, as well as revelling in the guilty pleasure of finding stories more substantial when they’re based on another person’s reality. Above all, In the House is bursting with wit, its seemingly simple narrative revealing itself to be multilayered: it’s never clear what is or isn’t genuine, other than Germaine’s perverse gratification in a boy’s homework. For bonus humour, there’s Kristin Scott Thomas as Germaine’s wife who finds her own interest in Claude’s writing – and Claude himself.

Opening on a close-up of a vagina that match-cuts to a sideways eyeball with a single tear running down it, L’Amant Double quickly establishes itself as Ozon’s glorious mash-up of David Cronenberg and Brian De Palma: there’s split-screen silliness, kinky sex (including pegging), and vengeful twins competing for the same woman. It may not be Ozon’s most nuanced work, but where else will you find Jérémie Renier as two identical brothers kissing each other in the nude?

Loosely adapted from a Joyce Carol Oates short story, the erotic thriller stars Marine Vacth (so brilliant in Ozon’s 2013 social satire Young and Beautiful) as Chloé, a distressed museum worker who falls in love with her tender therapist, Paul. Problems arise when Chloé cheats on Paul with his twin brother, Louis, another therapist played by Renier whose proposed treatment is aggressive sex. It sounds trashy, and let’s be honest, it is, but Ozon shoots the zaniness with exquisite beauty, squeezing in jaw-dropping dream – or should that be nightmare? – sequences at every opportunity.

As the co-writer of Swimming Pool and 5×2, Emmanuèle Bernheim holds great importance in Ozon’s filmography. After Bernheim’s passing in 2017, Ozon paid tribute by adapting her memoir, Everything Went Fine, a book about her sick father wishing to die while living in France, a country where euthanasia is illegal. The solution proves to be sneaking him out across the border to Switzerland, all while avoiding the police and attempts by the father’s secret gay lover to foil any plans.

On screen, Emmanuèle is depicted by Sophie Marceau with warmth and tenderness, especially in the interactions with her sister, Pascale (Géraldine Pailhas), and their ailing father, André (André Dussollier). Moreover, Everything Went Fine isn’t a dour drama about the ethics of death. In fact, it’s a thriller with real stakes, real people and, ultimately, real heart. Ozon may have built his career on provocations, but here he makes a genuine statement about outdated laws regarding the right to die.

When Autumn Falls is out in UK cinemas now.