Appropriately for a sombre story set after the First World War and adapted from Ernst Lubitsch’s 1932 melodrama BROKEN LULLABY, Francois Ozon shoots most of FRANTZ in a glowing monochrome, except for the plentiful moments of high emotion, when the film blossoms into colour (rather like Gary Ross’s 1998 film PLEASANTVILLE, where colour represents sexual awakening).

Here, the passions of the young German Anna (Paula Beer) have been thwarted by the death of her fiancé Frantz Hoffmeister in the trenches towards the end of the war. Now living with Frantz’s parents as both a comfort and a surrogate child, Anna regularly visits Frantz’s grave with flowers, until one day she finds she is not alone. Laying flowers ahead of her is the young Frenchman Adrien Rivoire (Pierre Niney) who claims to have befriended Frantz in Paris before the hostilities drove them apart.

Gradually, and despite the festering resentment in the small German town towards anyone French – led by Anna’s admirer Kreutz (Johann von Bulow) – Adrien works his way into the affections of both Anna and the Hoffmeisters. He charms them out of their grief – ‘My only wound is Frantz’ – and with Anna, visits the locations of her and Frantz’s courtship (cue colour). When Anna accepts Adrien’s offer to the annual dance, having previously turned down Kreutz, and buys a new dress from Paris to signify her re-entry into the world, the stage seems set for another ugly French/German showdown; which Philippe Rombi’s score, both romantic and ominous, also promises to deliver.

But instead, Adrien disappears, after first confessing his terrible secret to Anna by the side of Frantz’s grave. Now Ozon departs from Lubitsch’s original film, which was itself developed from a play by Maurice Rostand (ultimate spoiler alert: L’HOMME QUE J’AI TUE). Heartbroken by the disappearance of another loved one – and unaware of the truth, after Anna decides not to reveal it to them – the Hoffmeisters encourage her to follow Adrien’s progress to Paris. They suggest she traces him via the Opera (where Adrien claims to have been a violinist in the orchestra) and the Louvre (where Adrien claims he and Frantz had been smitten with a picture by Manet of ‘a young man with his head thrown back’ which turns out to be ‘Le Suicide’).

Anna’s journey of discovery takes her from a hospital for war victims to Adrien’s family chateau, where a final surprise awaits, via a brothel Frantz frequented before the war. Her pursuit of Adrien plays out like a thriller, with a mounting sense of melodrama lurking round every corner. But Ozon is more interested in the psychology of his two main characters, as they start writing letters to each other which acknowledge the truth of the situation – only to crumple them up and retreat into their fictions, much in the way that the defeated Germans bellow nationalistic slogans in bars, and crippled French soldiers in Paris struggle to their feet to sing the ‘Marseillaise’.

In his best work, Francois Ozon has brought dynamic performances from his actors: from Catherine Deneuve and Gerard Depardieu in POTICHE, Charlotte Rampling in SWIMMING POOL, and Kristin Scott Thomas and Fabrice Luchini in IN THE HOUSE to the whole cast of EIGHT WOMEN. FRANTZ is no exception, the turbulent emotions on display perfectly realised by Pierre Niney and – exceptionally – the 22-year old Paula Beer, who with no more than a glance can demonstrate that while hers isn’t the title role, the film is all about Anna.