Saucy sailors, savage icons and erotic nightmares: the wild works of François Ozon

Often regarded as the enfant terrible of French cinema, Ozon is a chameleonic filmmaker who skips between genres but always brings a queer energy wherever he lands.

(L–R): ‘8 Women’, ‘Everything Went Fine’, ‘Swimming Pool’, ‘Frantz’. Source: SBS

“I think cinema has to deal with desire,” says François Ozon, arguably France’s most mischievously playful and cinematically seductive filmmaker working today. If you first came to his eye-opening oeuvre via 2018’s white-hot takedown of systemic sexual abuse within the Catholic church, By the Grace of God (be quick, it’s only streaming at SBS On Demand until 31 August), you might have a slightly skewed expectation of his work. But the truth is, skewering power structures and faux morality high ground stuff is inherent in even his most jolly romps.

Here are a few of our favourite Ozon provocations in the steamy Focus on: Francois Ozon SBS On Demand collection.

Swimming Pool

Ozon’s debut (partly) English language offering scored him his first nomination for France’s prestigious Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. A sultry, slow-burn thriller, it stars a luminous (and bilingual) Charlotte Rampling as Sarah, a cranky crime author wrestling with writer’s block. Retreating to the summer house of her agent, as played by fellow titan Charles Dance, her short-lived bliss is disturbed by the unannounced arrival of his daughter Julie (Ludivine Sagnier). Sarah’s annoyance soon turns to voyeuristic obsession in a tantalising tale that twists and turns deliciously.

Frantz

His most lushly classical cinematic offering to date, Ozon’s knotty morality play rises from the rubble of Germany following the end of the Great War. Transit lead Paula Beer plays Anna, a young woman grieving the battlefield death of her fiancé, who lends the film its name. Intrigued to discover Yves Saint Laurent star Pierre Niney’s French soldier leaving flowers at his grave, Anna’s growing connection to this handsome stranger threatens to upend all manner of secrets best left buried.

8 Women

When you can assemble the might of generations of French icons, including goddess-tier Catherine Deneuve alongside equally outstanding Isabelle Huppert and Fanny Ardant, you know you’re a power player. Ozon wraps these heroes and more (Sagnier’s in the mix) in a darkly sassy musical that doubles as a witty whodunnit. Who cares about the dead man upstairs when you have an ensemble this sartorially magnificent, all packing dirty secrets and a willingness to strafe each other in snort-laugh-inducingly vicious crossfire?

Water Drops on Burning Rocks

There’s a trace of the late, New German Cinema great Rainer Werner Fassbinder in Ozon’s saucy, taboo-pushing filmography and his reliance on a revolving carousel of familiar actors, so it was devilishly appealing when the Frenchman adapted his fellow enfant terrible’s unproduced stageplay Tropfen auf heißen Steinen. A tragi-camp chamber piece, it casts French star Bernard Giraudeau as cantankerous Berlin businessman Léopold, who seduces Malik Zidi’s much younger naïf Franz. Which complicates things, somewhat, when Franz’s ex-fiancée Anna shows up (Sagnier again), as does Léopold’s ex Véra (Anna Thomson). A marvellously hot mess.

Double Lover

People turning out to be not quite who we think is a recurring theme in Ozon’s work and is taken to the extreme in this delirious erotic thriller adapted from the Joyce Carol Oates novel of two names – Lives of the Twins or Kindred Passions depending on where it was released – and under her pseudonym Rosamond Smith. Confused? Just think Dead Ringers but very French, as Marine Vacth’s Chloé shacks up with her not-very-professional psychologist Paul (Jérémie Renier, In Bruges) only to get twice as much as she bargained for. Nightmarish fun, it received another Palme d’Or nod.

Everything Went Fine

One of Ozon’s more straightlaced, but certainly not dull, offerings, his fourth Palme d’Or nominee will be a tough watch for those who have had to (or are worried about having to) navigate the end of a parent’s life. Drawing from the memoir of his late co-writer Emmanuèle Bernheim, he casts Sophie Marceau in the analogous role of a daughter whose ailing dad (André Dussollier) asks her to help him check out early. Assisted suicide is illegal in France, presenting a thorny dilemma, with Fassbinder fave Hanna Schygulla showing up as a Swiss clinician and Rampling cameoing as the estranged ex-wife. A gut punch in slow motion.

Criminal Lovers

Hansel and Gretel gets a hornier, more horrifying makeover at the schlockier end of Ozon’s career here. Marking Jérémie Renier’s first appearance for the director, he plays a confused high school jock convinced by his girlfriend Alice (Natacha Régnier) to murder their classmate Saïd (Salim Kechiouche), whom he kinda has a crush on, because Alice says Saïd raped her. But when they try to dump the body in the woods, they wind up at the mercy of a twisted stranger played with beard-twirling, cannibalistic menace by Predrag ‘Miki’ Manojlovic. It’s bonkers but brill.

Under The Sand

The Night Porter star Rampling also excels in this haunting examination of grief, again suggesting holiday homes are cursed places. She plays Marie, a university professor whose 25-year marriage comes to a shocking ending when her husband Jean (Bruno Cremer) is lost, presumably at sea, while she snoozes sunbathing. Unable to accept he is most likely dead, she conducts what she understands as an affair with another man (Jacques Nolot) while continuing ‘conversations’ with her husband, whom she glimpses all over Paris a la the red raincoat round Venice in Don’t Look Now. A deeply adult film, it’ll leave you emotionally unmoored.

Summer of 85

This overtly queer French fancy underlines, yet again, that the sea is not your friend in an Ozon movie. Or maybe it is, given that Félix Lefebvre’s sweet young lad is swept up in the arms of Benjamin Voisin’s spunky sailor David after nearly drowning. This dreamboat dalliance, oft on the back of a motorbike, is doomed, of course – Ozon doesn’t do happy endings – but not before things become extremely ‘it’s complicated’ thanks to the arrival of Station Eleven star Philippine Velge. Tricksy narration, gender binary-smashing plot twists and the Rod Stewart needle drop you never knew you needed all help this YA novel adaptation sail into the sunset.

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See more in the FOCUS ON: FRANCOIS OZON COLLECTION at SBS On Demand.