Peter von Kant is a successful, middle-aged director, with a dusting of decadence. He lives with his assistant Karl, whose psyche has to endure the brunt of the director’s humiliation and mistreatment. Peter’s constant muse is the transcendent Sidonie, a brilliant actress whose moon-pale skin resembles an unlit cinema screen, and her lips a velvety cinema seat. After meeting young actor Amir, the director falls in love and wants to revolutionise cinema together with him. They succeed, but Amir destroys Peter’s world in the process by planting seeds of demons.

When writing and directing The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972), Rainer Werner Fassbinder, the enfant terrible of German cinema, made an unflattering comment about women saying they “make use of their oppression as an effective instrument of terror.” The author of modern mannerism, French director Francois Ozon, is his polar opposite. It is the female characters in his films who have been given a sensitive, complete, and intelligent form and by reversing the gender of the protagonist, Ozon wanted to explore destructive male characters. In this film, Ozon has created a visually sophisticated game of sexuality and power, the scale of which is human ambition lit up by fame. Denis Menochet, Isabelle Adjani, and Hanna Schygulla, whom Fassbinder repeatedly worked with, appear in the main roles.