For such an unpredictable and frequently adventurous film-maker, it’s interesting how François Ozon seemed to slip into the slightly lesser-valued European auteur establishment: a respected name who routinely pops up in major festivals, gets good reviews and wins the odd prize or two, yet rarely inspires the ardent director-worship reserved for the likes of Haneke or Almodóvar.
Despite alternating like no one else between handsome French classicism and queer, sinuous genre kink, Ozon, now 52, occasionally seems at risk of being taken for granted. His latest, the strong, stirring Catholic church abuse drama By the Grace of God, practically asks to be underestimated, offering viewers familiar-seeming procedural trappings before the wallop of its emotional inquiry hits. (It’s still in cinemas, though also available to stream via Curzon Home Cinema.)
Mubi, however, is offering its subscribers a reminder of when Ozon’s cinema seemed newer and more transgressive. Its François Ozon: Loving Provocation mini-retrospective is primarily focused on his early years, when his balance of sensual daring and elegant form briefly marked him as an enfant terrible. His wildly surreal psychosexual debut feature Sitcom – sadly unavailable to stream from any UK outlet – isn’t part of it, but things kick off nicely with his next film, the jaggedly thrilling and rarely discussed Criminal Lovers. Now 20 years old, it’s Ozon’s most brutal film, bearing the imprint of such 90s provocateurs as Larry Clark and Tarantino. It shares the latter’s B-movie fixation in its study of teens committing murder and facing Grimm brothers-like consequences, though there’s a cool, visceral strain of poetry running throughout.
Things get a little more polished with Ozon’s next film, and the next in Mubi’s selection: Water Drops on Burning Rocks, adapted from an unproduced Rainer Werner Fassbinder play, is a polysexual tangle of hearts and libidos, beginning with a middle-aged businessman’s seduction of an ostensibly straight 20-year-old, and growing more cruelly complex and grimly funny through each of its four acts.
It’s a slinky, nasty pleasure, but you couldn’t have anticipated that just a few months later Ozon would make the leap to Under the Sand, Mubi’s next pick, which remains his masterpiece, and one of the new century’s essential films. Charlotte Rampling’s career-reviving performance as an English professor sinking into denial and delusion following her husband’s disappearance is as fine-grained and incrementally devastating as screen acting gets, but Ozon’s balance of calm technical control and bleeding-below-the-surface humanity takes equal credit for the film’s eerie staying power. Mubi’s selection then skips ahead a few years to 2004’s told-in-reverse marriage story 5×2, another of his “mature” efforts, and one that still plays rather well as an elegant narrative experiment, even if the unfolding relationship at its centre never quite reaches the heart.
If you’re looking to fill in more Ozon gaps, other streaming services will provide when it comes to most of his features. (His wonderful short films, available on DVD, haven’t hit the UK streaming menu yet.) Among the most fun: the Deneuve-starring double shot of high-camp period rompery in 8 Women and Potiche (both available on iTunes); the crafty, shape-shifting storytelling games of In the House (on Amazon); and the delicious bad taste of last year’s loopy erotic noir L’Amant double (Amazon again). Or return to the disquieting Charlotte Rampling realm with the illusory mystery Swimming Pool (iTunes), or the half-buried but winningly bittersweet melodrama Le Refuge (via Chili), the summery, Rohmer-esque breeze of which is all the more welcome in grey November. There’s an Ozon for any season.
New to streaming & DVD this week
Earthquake Bird
(Netflix, 15)
With all the viscous gloss you’d expect given Ridley Scott’s presence as producer, this westerners-adrift-in-Japan mystery is sleekly atmospheric and well acted by Alicia Vikander and Riley Keough) – though as a thriller it’s a bit low-voltage.
The Dead Don’t Die
(Universal, 15)
Jim Jarmusch’s slacker zom-com largely struck out with the critics, but if you approach it in the throwaway spirit with which it was made – and maybe a drink or two – there’s silly, all-star fun to be had.
The Lion King
(Disney, PG)
Yes, it made a billion at the global box office, but now that Disney’s dead-eyed, “live-action” CGI remake of its swinging safari hit is available to view at home, is there any reason not to simply watch the more vibrant original instead?
Werewolf
(Eureka!, 15)
It prowled under the radar in cinemas, but Polish director Adrian Panek’s bold, teeth-bared fusion of horror film and Holocaust drama merits attention. The allegorical tightrope it walks is a tricky one, but accomplished with power and style.
The African Queen
(Eureka!, PG)
If you pick up only one Hollywoodised African adventure this week, make it John Huston’s still-sparky, humidly colourful 1951 odd-couple romance starring Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn, here given a 4K restoration and generously tricked-out packaging.
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