As in the source material, the beauty of the title of François Ozon’s adaptation of Albert Camus’s The Stranger (Music Box, $27.96 Blu-ray, $23.96 DVD) is that it can refer to any number of its players. Surely there’s the mysterious protagonist, the emotionally inert Meursault (Benjamin Voisin), whose office job is as undefined as his first name, a hallmark of existentialist … [Read more...]
The power and the infamy: ‘Grace of God’ takes tough look at priest scandal
Sweeping yet intimate, and told with a classicist rigor, By the Grace of God isn’t just the most mature and elegant film from the international enfant terrible François Ozon. It’s also among the year’s most consequential and newsworthy movies, in which the recent events it dramatizes nip at the heels of history — and precedents — in the making. In France in 2016, the … [Read more...]
‘Double Lover’ audacious and erotic, but ultimately a letdown
Though it’s only arriving in Palm Beach County on Friday, it’s no coincidence that Francois Ozon’s Double Lover opened in limited U.S. release on Feb. 14, less than a week after Fifty Shades Freed tied up a few thousand screens. Though its debt is more to David Cronenberg and Brian De Palma than to E.L. James’ risible mom porn, the movies share more space on a Venn diagram that … [Read more...]