Isabelle Adjani and Denis Ménochet in Peter Von Kant (Carole Bethuel/Strand Releasing)

Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972) was already a gay camp classic before François Ozon’s new gender-reversed Peter von Kant. Still, Ozon’s lighter take reimagines the histrionic story of romantic domination as somehow both campier and gayer.

In Fassbinder’s original, three women collide in a plush but claustrophobic bedroom. The film’s namesake Petra is a fashion influencer of the 1970s, and we’re confined with sad and obsessed Petra in her luxuriously cramped home as she lords and loses power over her lover and assistant. Only women appear on screen, each exploiting another for her needs, toying with sexual desire, romantic desire, friendship, and devotion (personal and professional) for her own petty pleasure and psychological needs.

Ozon’s lead is Peter (Custody’s Denis Ménochet), a successful film director aged out of youthful good looks but still hungry to associate with good-looking youths. He employs an assistant, Karl (Stefan Crépon), a chicly garbed silent twink, who takes Peter’s abuse as a routine of his job, and falls in love with lusty Amin (Khalil Gharbia), who takes Peter’s desire with eager satisfaction. In the end, Ozon finds ways to invert each power dynamic to leave scars, with Amin treating Peter like Peter treats the doormat Karl and Karl empowered by Amin.

Turning Peter into a film director is a great choice, allowing for commentary on Fassbinder and Ozon himself. Ozon’s movies tend to have autobiographical elements, at least according to the press notes, and it’s not hard to imagine what’s relatable here when reimagining this film and centering it on the anxieties of an aging queer man, though this gay male narrative removes some of the original’s melancholy and bitter tears. Ozon’s take underscores Peter’s more straightforward fears of losing relevance and stature in the material world (in sex and love but also film, finances, and family).

The film is heartfelt, laughable, and genuine though melodramatically over-the-top, and its best humor comes from an earnest representation of affection and thwarted desire. Ménochet’s performance is a perfect blend of the supercilious and serious. Peter goes all-out for what he wants, vocally and physically, and demands center stage attention from his coterie of paramours, employees, family, and peers. We have to take him seriously, but should we? By the end, Peter lounges with his mother on a daybed like a sulking baby in a crib.

That is another departure from Petra to Peter—there are men and women in Ozon’s version, popping the stifled bubble of the original’s gender dynamics. Isabelle Adjani plays Peter’s star actress and close confidante Sidonie, who introduces him to her latest companion, Amin. Adjani understands the film’s tone better than anyone, delivering each line with a one-two punch of multiple meanings, giving the kind of nuanced camp performance that best honors Fassbinder. Peter’s devoted mother is played by Hanna Schygulla, who portrayed Petra’s lover (reinterpreted here as Amin) in the original. Peter’s daughter also appears, maybe to help underscore Ozon’s themes of an older gay man’s life that involves close female friends and strong family relationships.

Though its complex dynamics of sex and power may sound serious, the film feels like a lighter version of its source material, less Jean Genet and more Noël Coward.