Berliner Paula Beer—new to American audiences, and winner of the Best New Young Actor award at last year’s Venice film festival—has been starring in movies for over eight years. But her performance in François Ozon ’s riveting new film FRANTZ is a breakthrough. She plays Anna to Pierre Niney’s Adrien, two young Europeans negotiating the aftermath of the Great War and their connection to the title character, Anna’s dead fiancé.

The plot mirrors Ernst Lubitsch’s Broken Melody, but like most of Ozon’s work, FRANTZ goes nowhere you think it might. The film ends, speculatively, in the 1920s, and a scene at the Louvre prompts a question: Will Anna’s love for a painting about death save her life?

 

FRANTZ

Through April 6.

Nuart Theatre

11272 Santa Monica Blvd., West Los Angeles.

From April 7 at the Laemmle Monica, Playhouse (Pasadena), and Town Center (Encino).

Above: Pierre Niney in Frantz.

Below: Niney and Paula Beer.