Franz (Film)

• Jacques Brel: Léon
• Barbara: Léonie
• Danièle Evenou: Catherine
• Simone Max: Leon's mother

Franz is a film by Jacques Brel in 1972. It is the directorial debut of Belgian cabaret singer and actor. It is about the unspoken love of a man for a woman.

Action

The venue is a family pension in the Belgian sea resort of Blankenberge. The person suffering from a strong attachment to the mother Léon ( Brel ) is recovering from a leg injury there. Léon communicates daily with his mother by carrier pigeon. One day, two new guests meet in the guesthouse: Catherine ( Danièle Evenou ) and Léonie (Barbara ). Catherine is pretty, elegant and witty, and immediately attracts the attention of the other boarders themselves. Léonie, into which Léon madly in love immediately seem to be the most reticent of the two. Leon's clumsy overtures to Léonie cheer our hotel guests, Léon becomes the target of their bad jokes. Finally, Leon's mother ( Simone Max ) appears in the pension and destroys the not yet sprouted up her son's relationship to Leonie. In the end, the completely desperate non-swimmers Léon crashes with suicidal intent in the waters of the North Sea. In the last scene Léonie is seen, which is situated at the end of their stay at the station of her family at the platform are her husband and her daughter.

Significance and reception

" Franz " was filmed in the summer and fall of 1971 at the original location in Blankenberge and was the Belgian contribution to the film festival of Cannes 1972. Although the directorial debut Brel appears in all the relevant short biographies, but came out of France hardly to performance and is also used in France itself hardly shown ( for example in television). The film is under Brel fans as a rarity and was indeed well received at the time of publication of the review, but fell at the box office by, perhaps because he is too attached to the " poetic cosmos " Brel.