Francois Ozon

It's not obvious to have a male character in this kind of story, I think, because very often the films with men are about action and not interiority...

Ozon presents no easy answers, but his often incisive "show, don't tell" character study makes touching emotional observations of marital folly.

A cinematic tone poem, wafting on wistful tableaus and sad faces....mostly elaborates on how death must ultimately be a personal experience.

Inviting photography and a relentless pace complement Claude's unfolding narrative, but the big thrills are in the deftly drawn characters...and the incisive satire...

A strong thematic undercurrent pits bourgeois social conventions against authentic self-definition and ultimate freedom to live without shame or undue social limitations.

Interjections of color—and the narrative implications of them—are but one way in which Ozon creates and subverts expectations...Ozon remains interested in the stories people tell to one another, the horrible truths and the comfortable lies.

Ozon's gender reversal of Fassbinder's The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant straddles camp, but it's colorful and makes a bit more of the obsessive relationship between artist & muse.