Metacritic reviews

The way in which Ozon again uses mirror images, which reveal the similarities between the French and the Germans just after the war, or the way Fanny and Anna come to possibly mirror each other again suggest that a master storyteller is at work.

Frantz is arguably one of the straightest films Ozon has made – in both the dramatic and the sexual senses – but his complex sensibilities and fine-tuned irony are very evident in a mature work that transcends genre pastiche to be intellectually stimulating and emotionally satisfying.

Ozon is often at his best when working with women, and he has a fabulous talent in Paula Beer to bring his protagonist, Anna, to vivid life. She’s stunning in the role.

As Adrien, Pierre Niney is extraordinary to behold: pale, tapered, and flickering, like a candle made flesh.

It’s a heady hall of mirrors that keeps revealing, or at least suggesting new depths and angles. But while this kind of intense creative exercise no doubt deserves respect, ultimately one has the uneasy sense that things don’t really add up.

Beer and Niney do solid work, but their sensitive efforts can’t quite breathe life into a story that no longer seems terribly relevant.

Frantz too often belabors the obvious and ultimately blunts its own message.

Frantz plays like classic melodrama, and has certain charms.

The pacing is so humorless and funereal that it squelches the possibility of heat or conflict arising between the characters.

Ozon's Frantz is, sadly, an underwhelming tale of a European union that didn't quite make it, its chocolate box sheen belying the emptiness at its heart.