Water Drops on Burning Rocks (2000)

Ozon made this film from an early play by Fassbinder. It's an intense and claustrophobic love story—the whole thing happens inside an apartment—in Germany in the 1970s. Ozon divides it into acts, the first of which shows Léopold (Bernard Giraudeau), a handsome and assertive businessman in his 50s, talking to a young man, Franz (Malik Zidi). The conversation becomes a seduction, and they go to bed, enacting a dream Franz had, an enactment that recurs several times, with variations. Then they've been lovers for months, and though the affection and attraction persists, there's a destructive element in Léopold that shows up as restless discontent and mean-spirited bickering. Nothing Franz does is right, and though he wants to leave he is still in love. While Léopold is away on a business trip Franz's old girlfriend Anna (Ludivine Sagnier) shows up, and she brings some sunlight into the dark rooms of the flat, with her beauty, her optimism, her loving plans for a future with Franz, her joy in lovemaking—as well as the fact that she opens the curtains. Franz almost stops moping, but then Léopold returns. The movie almost descends into farce as Anna finds Léopold attractive, and then Léopold's former girlfriend Vera (Anna Thomson) arrives. When Léopold proposes a menage à quatre, the girls run giggling to the bedroom, but lags behind, telling Léopold, "You don't need me." He answers, "But you need me." As Léopold and Anna have some vigorous sex, Vera steals away, feeling superfluous, and she sits beside Franz on the floor and tells him her story. Nothing, not even a sex change, was enough to maintain Léopold's desire, and though he abandoned her and treated cruelly then and now, she says "I'm his creature." Franz, too, is his creature, and he's dying—he's taken poison. Weirdly, he calls his mother and has a brief, matter-of-fact conversation letting her know what's happening, and then he dies. Léopold seems just as unperturbed, and goes back to bed with the weeping Anna. Vera tries to open the apartment window but it's stuck. We see her standing, head down, weeping, her hands pressed against the glass as if trying to escape a trap.Although much of it is dark, the colours and photography are impressive, as is the acting of all four characters. Giraudeau delivers a fine mixture of sleekness, power, affection, and selfishness, while Zidi's part is also a mixture—of a kind of neo-existentialist disaffection (he likes to say things don't mean much to him), innocence, and injured affection. Thomson is surprisingly powerful in her one big scene, when Vera tells Franz her story. Sagnier is quite wonderful, very young-looking, fresh, with that husky voice and that gorgeous body Ozon loves to film. While there's no graphic representation of sex acts here, there's a lot of sex, mostly as it begins but also one or two brief scenes in the process.Over all, the movie appears to be a story of the heartlessness and destruction at the core of some relationships, or at the core of some people it is dangerous to love at the same time that it is impossible not to love them. Very sad.

After the original but distressing "les amants criminels", François Ozon decided to adapt a German play. The action takes place in Germany during the seventies. A flat is the sole scenerie and the movie focuses on an homosexual love affair between 2 characters: a fifty year-old man and a student. François Ozon films their love life with reserve and discretion and confirms his skill of making.This is a movie that is worth for its clever dialogs and especially its outstanding performance. Bernard Giraudeau dominates the cast. An important part of the movie rests on his shoulders. François Ozon's movie is also a reflection about love and sexual desire. On the other hand, I think that the end of the movie is rather unsuccessful, from the moment when Giraudeau comes back in the flat with a friend of his. The sequence where the 4 characters are dancing on a disco music is particularly laughable. Apart from this, a smart movie that skilfully avoids filmed stage production

I've never been a big Fassbinder fan but with the coming retrospective I thought it was time to check him out again. So I chose this movie, since it was a Fassbinder script directed by a Frenchman (Ozon) that I admire. It was a delight. Somehow the problems I always had enjoying Fassbinder (the intense cruelty between his characters, the disorienting emotional mood swings, the bleak, dreary German atmosphere) were completely offset by the sense of play and love of color and music that Ozon brings to this script. As in 8 Women, his sense of style and beauty rival Almodovar's and even the grim reality of Fassbinder has a beautiful, chic French gloss. He understands that love and sex in Fassbinder are closely matched with jealousy and destruction. It all clicked for me. And the omnisexuality is so fresh - so unspoiled... That said, it's a devastating critique of what lovers can do to each other. But it's,...well...so pretty...I really, really enjoyed it.

I wasn't prepared for this one. I expected to view a "normal" movie ... but this wasn't one of them.It is an adaptation of a teather piece, and all the action takes place in a apartment.During the first three acts I was a bit stirred by the open showed homosex situation between the lad and the man, and I thought i was to give to this movie a 2/10 vote.But I have to admit that the dialogues between the two characters, (deliberately stirring and oscillating between drama, satire and paradox), are well done.When the girl and the woman enter the scene, the movie turns into total paradox till the paradoxal ending.It starts almost like a reality movie, but it is all except a reality movie.It's a black drama with satire and paradoxes, that revolves around the profound (and, to me, degradating and disgusting) effects that sex can have on people.Not for all tastes.Vote 5/10