Water Drops on Burning Rocks

François Ozon has flair and style ('Swimming Pool', 'Under the Sand', '8 Women', etc) and in scripting Rainer Fassbinder's 1970s play 'Gouttes d'eau sur pierres brûlantes' for the screen he has created an edgy, fun, and poignant examination of the lives of four people at their intersection.

Act I (for that is the way the film is laid out in homage to Fassbinder's play): 50-year-old Léopold (Bernard Giraudeau) is entertaining 19-year-old Franz (Malik Zidi), who he has picked up in a bar, with sharp repartees about his past loves and is sparred by Franz relating his current affair with the young and beautiful Anna (Ludivine Sagnier). The conversation gradually gets around to seduction and both Léopold and Franz happily reenact each other's physical fantasies. Act II: some months later and Franz has moved in with Léopold becoming the devoted housewife in lederhosen to Léopold's increasingly cranky self. They argue, threaten, but eventually succumb to the safety of the boudoir to settle differences. Act III: Léopold's ex lover Vera (Anna Levine) arrives at the door to find Léopold in a new life and departs brokenhearted. Anna likewise arrives during one of Léopold's absences and for two days Franz and Anna try to recapture their previous affair. Upon Léopold's return, Anna finds Léopold appealing and behaves seductively. Vera arrives, reports that she is a transsexual now in a female form, and Léopold is delighted with the idea of a ménage a quarte. But it is Franz who has found his true life and love and how he deals with the proposed turn of events forms the rather surprising end to this film.

Each of the four actors is excellent and Ozon paces them well. There are some really fine moments, as when Franz reclines in his bath quoting Heine's poem 'Lorelei' revealing how far more penetrating the changes in his vision of his life really have become, when Ozon improves on Fassbinder. Not a great movie but a bit of the different that spices movie viewing. Grady Harp

When Ozon meets Fassbinder, WATER DROPS ON BURNING ROCKS is based on Fassbinder's four- act play he wrote when he was only 19, with a minimal cast of four exclusively boxed inside an apartment, which immediately evokes Fassbinder's own chamber rhapsody THE BITTER TEARS OF PETRA VON KANT (1972), but under Ozon's fabrication, there is enough French glibness and levity to temper an inchoate observer's jejune but palatable fantasy about the abjection of love.

Léopold (Giraudeau), a 50-something business man, brings home a 20-year-old boy Franz (a ginger Zidi), aka. Fassbinder's alter ago, they engage in conversations and consensual sex, and in the next act, six-months later, Franz has already moved in as Léopold's living-in boyfriend. The pair often squabbles about trivial matters due to their different personalities, but a grace not is that their sex can still expunge the discomfort, but inexorably the situation evolves into a humiliation test for Franz, as much as he loves Léopold, how long can he endure his domineering volatility?

During Léopold's away for a business trip, Franz's ex-girlfriend Anna (Sagnier) visits him in the apartment and they rekindle their romance and it seems Franz has finally made up his mind, to end his masochistic affection to Léopold and seek a new lease on life with Anna. But their plan is scuppered when Leopold unexpectedly returns home earlier than planned, he effortlessly dismisses their child's play meanwhile at the drop of a hat, Anna falls under Léopold's suave charm and is more than ready to put out, and the situation compounds when Léopold's jilted old-flame Vera (Levine) pays an unbidden visit, the quartet is assembled, and a new round of master-and- slave game starts. A disconsolate Frantz, piqued by Léopold's promiscuity and haughtiness, and the fact that he has never been taken seriously by him in their lopsided relationship, yet admits his incapability to overcome the inherent subservience which a creature holds towards his creator, conducts a final manifestation of his severance from him once and for all.

Demarcated its running time within a 90-minute spell, the film doesn't feel over-claustrophobic in spite of its one-location-only monotony thanks to Ozon's jaunty tenor and clinical interior design, a telling discrepancy from Fassbinder's own temperament, yet both share an artistic astuteness of exquisite camera compositions to amply and examine the emotional turmoil of their actors.

Although the whole narrative might partake of a youngster's perverse Freudian intuition about love, carnality and preordained conflict between rebellion and submission, the core cast leavens the material with layers of personal touch, ranging from bravado (Sagnier's spritely volupté and Zidi's painstakingly bland greenness) to bravura (Giraudeau's quasi-insufferable cockiness and Levine's uncanny vulnerability under the slap). As a matter of fact, Vera's jeremiad told through her ultimate tête-à-tête with Frantz is more unsettling than Frantz's struggle and the last shot framing at her attempt to fight back the stifled morbidness is Ozon's coup de maitre, who never flinch from exacting gallows humor when someone is shuffled off this mortal coil.

By and large this Ozon-and-Fassbinder hybridization doesn't yield a 1+1>2 ground-breaker, nevertheless it still tackles its intricate dilemma with a measured stride, if not entirely coherent, at least we have that "man in overcoat" fetish to relish with a knowing grin.

Francois Ozon's film version of Fassbinder's play is like another more slightly surreal, very blackly comic version of "The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant", played out this time mostly by men. Fifty year old Leo picks up twenty year old Franz and brings him home for the night. Franz stays, becoming his lover, his houseboy but mostly his slave. There are only two other characters in this slight, stage-bound piece; Anna, Franz's vacuous former girlfriend and Vera, Leo's former transsexual lover.

Fundamentally it's about love, of the destructive, unwholesome kind maybe, but love nevertheless. Whatever hold Leo has over Franz, (and Vera), they both love him though it could hardly be said that it is reciprocated. Leo is very much the master and everyone else is his slave. Whether he is capable of love is debatable.

Ozon makes the piece both erotic and humorous but it is never quite as touching as it ought to be. All four players give good performances with Malik Zidi quietly outstanding as the boy.

Based on the Fassbinder play, Water Drops on Burning Rocks is an acutely observed exploration of relationships, successfully mixing burlesque absurdity with grim truths to create an enjoyable and insightful film.

The film's characters revolve around the life and whims of Leopald (Bernard Giraudeau), an ageing swinger whose laissez-faire suavity seduces the callow Franz (Malik Zidi). By the beginning of Act II, the latter's boyish confidence has been replaced with the willingness to selflessly submit himself to the whims of his irritable older lover. With the arrival of Anna (Ludivine Sagnier), Franz's subservient fiance, and Vera (Anna Levine), Leopald's former partner, the latter's apartment becomes the home to both farce and tragedy, as desires, attachments and caprices play themselves out in a confinement from which there is no escape. Ozon's consummate direction and the 1970's setting give the film and ostensible gloss which makes its underlying darkness even more striking. This is no less aided by the effortless confidence exuded by Giraudeau and the desperate neediness that is excellently portrayed by his three lovers. What makes Water Drops on Burning Rocks a memorable work is the power of its insights and the originality of their portrayal; it is a film whose exterior is humorous and playful but whose interior contains a bleak vision, in which relationships mean little more than a repetitive vacuum of need, where libidos and routine hold more weight than deep affection or care.

A finely crafted examination of the traits that can be most destructive and tawdry in relationships, Water Drops on Burning Rocks is saved from being dogmatic or overwhelming by the subtlety and wit employed by Ozon and his cast. It is an example of understated film-making that conveys real insight on a subject that has been much maligned in other films, such as the appalling Romance. Highly recommended to those who wish to a covertly intelligent, beguiling work.

After watching Water Drops on Burning Rocks, it is hard to tell exactly what flamboyant French filmmaker Francois Ozon wanted to achieve with it. On the one hand, the film is a commentary on relationships and sexuality, but on the other hand, much like Ozon's earlier Sitcom, it's easy to think that the talented young director made the film simply to shock. While I don't doubt that shocking his audience was partly his motivation for making this film, Ozon has still created a film that is more than credible on the substance front as the movie professes that, just like the water drops that land on burning rocks of it's title; relationships and love fizzle out over time. The four parties in the play also represent four different points on the sexuality spectrum; we have an old bi-sexual male, a young confused male, a straight female and a male to female transsexual, so the sexuality commentary is on track as well as the comment on relationships in general. Just like Sitcom, also, Ozon always seems keen to push the taboos of the story into the audience's face; and does a good job, as at times it's easy to feel dirty just watching this movie.

The play that the film works from is from the pen of tortured artist Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and Francois Ozon seems keen to respect this fact throughout as he makes various tributes to Fassbinder's distinct style. Ozon is also keen to work in tributes to the French new wave cinema; most notably with a very strange dance scene, that, in spite of being off-cue with the rest of the movie, works very well thanks to the energy that Ozon gives the scene. It also serves as something of a relief to the disturbing and downbeat themes of the rest of the movie, and it's the only time that the underlying layer of black humour, which lies dormant for the majority of the piece (although it's definitely there), truly comes to the surface. In today's day and age, there are few filmmakers that are still capable of making a film that will leave the audience with something at the end of it; but it's safe to say that Ozon has managed it with this film. When the final credits rolled, I was unsure as to exactly what I had seen, but as time elapsed and I reflected on the movie; it's brilliance comes to light. While the movie isn't quite worthy of the term 'masterpiece'; it is certainly very good, and it represents another huge feather in the already feather-filled cap of Francois Ozon.