Peter von Kant review – François Ozon’s gender-swapping flirt with Fassbinder

Director François Ozon has had something of a lifelong creative crush on Rainer Werner Fassbinder. An early career breakthrough for Ozon came with the mannered but amusing ménage-à-quatre Water Drops on Burning Rocks, based on a stage play that Fassbinder wrote when he was still in his teens. Now Ozon consummates his ongoing flirtation with the German auteur with his latest picture, a gender-swapped reworking of Fassbinder’s 1972 film The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant.

French actor Denis Ménochet stars as Peter, a decadent film director at the peak of his success and power who falls for Amir (Khalil Ben Gharbia), the young, staggeringly beautiful boy who wafts into Peter’s apartment (the film takes place entirely within Peter’s home) as the guest of Peter’s best friend, Sidonie (Isabelle Adjani).

Duplicating the theatrical structure of Fassbinder’s original, the film unfolds in a series of acts, during which the relationship between Peter and Amir sours and the power dynamic shifts. Meanwhile, Peter’s mute, infatuated assistant Karl (Stefan Crepon) is tortured, but also slightly thrilled, by his boss’s autocratic cruelty.

It’s enjoyable enough, but Peter von Kant is a curiously insubstantial adjunct that trades some of the swirling, savage currents of melodrama of the original – which placed a female fashion designer rather than a male film-maker at the centre of the intrigue – for a frothy, flippant archness. The casting of the meaty, magnetic Ménochet, however, is smart: his resemblance to Fassbinder adds a self-referential layer to the drama.

• On Curzon Home Cinema from 23 December; in cinemas from 30 December