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| Plot Synopsis French bad boy director Francois Ozon follows up on his controversial first two films Sitcom (1998) and Criminal Lovers (1999) with this adaptation of a play that legendary German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder wrote when he was 19 years old. Retaining the play's four-act structure, the first act opens with middle-aged Leopold (Bernard Giraudeau) escorting young Franz (Malick Zidi) back to his apartment. Franz, who was on his way to visit his fianc�e Anna, allows himself to be picked up by the older man. After some small talk, Leopold orders Franz to undress and wait for him in the bedroom. The second act takes up six months later. Franz has moved into Leopold's apartment soon after their first encounter. Interested in the arts and poetry, he increasingly finds himself at odds with his older, moody, demanding lover. Still, the relationship manages to endure. In act three, ex-fianc�e Anna (Ludivine Sagnier) shows up at the apartment while Leopold is away. Their previous passion is quickly rekindled, and Anna soon marvels at the sundry techniques her lover has learned since she last saw him. When Leopold unexpectedly returns with Vera (Anna Thompson), his transsexual ex-lover, in tow, the stage is set for a complex dance of shifting power dynamics. This film was screened at the 2000 Berlin Film Festival. - Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide Reviews ELBERT VENTURA All Movie Guide Francois Ozon's adaptation of an early Rainer Werner Fassbinder play is a distanced chamber piece about the impossibility of human relationships. Set entirely within the confines of an apartment and populated by a meager cast of four, the movie has a theatrical feel - it's at once stylized and intimate. As expected, the movie shares the same thematic obsessions as Fassbinder's cinema. Charting the romantic travails of its four characters, Water Drops on Burning Rocks portrays a world where relationships - both hetero- and homosexual - are doomed to failure and repetition. Ozon shows the diagram of human love affairs to be little more than a hierarchy of domineering abusers and submissive victims, with victims eagerly taking on the dominant role when given the opportunity. The movie has an undercurrent of absurdist humor, but its laughs are muffled for the most part, with the exception being an out-of-left-field dance number that injects some needed energy into the dour, claustrophobic story. Beautifully structured and meticulously filmed, Water Drops on Burning Rocks is clearly the work of an intelligent filmmaker - albeit one whose misanthropic worldview may be off-putting to some viewers. JEREMIAH KIPP Filmcritic.Com Four people are in a room dancing, Charlie's Angels style, fingers pointed like shooting guns and booties shaking. Heads bob up and down in time with the pop and fizz funk of the German record playing in the background. Styled like a music video, we cut back and forth between all four of them swinging in sync with the rhythm and performing their individual motions with campy grandeur. After three or four minutes of this highly amusing, sexually charged romp and stomp in the living room, the middle aged businessman (obviously the leader of the group) abruptly turns off the record. "All right, that's enough. Everybody to the bedroom!" The women rush offscreen, giggling and squealing. That's what was used as a trailer for Francois Ozon's latest sexual comedy-thriller. The young Frenchman who directed the superb short film See the Sea and the puerile "shock-o-rama" feature Sitcom is back with another foray of men and women who push each other's buttons. Ozon lends his slightly warped comic perspective to a screenplay adapted from a theater piece by young, bitter Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Thank goodness Fassbinder never made this movie, since it is filled with pretentious dialogue which, if taken too seriously, would have been just painful. Fassbinder's earliest films are all bleak musings on how terrible the world is. "My soul is filled with such emptiness the likes of which you have never seen before, and I cannot ever be happy because my soul is empty, et cetera, et cetera." Humorless misanthropic slogans and self-loathing for ninety minutes do not make for an enjoying viewing experience. (He got better with age.) However, once Fassbinder's script was pared down by Ozon, some of the insightful bickering by a couple trapped in a living situation which has made them articulate and bitter comes to the forefront. This was the German auteur's greatest skill, the ability to paint characters who wallow in misery and inflict pain on those they hold closest to their hearts. Suddenly, every line of dialogue is a mini-apocalypse, such as, "Why do you wear shoes around the apartment? You're so nosy! I told you to wear slippers!" Older Fassbinder clone Leo (sleek Bernard Giraudeau, very fine) is the middle aged man who picks up straight, younger Fassbinder clone Franz (apple cheeked Malik Zidi) one night and gloriously seduces him. First, they drink. Leo turns on the charm, using flattery and subtle manipulations to get Franz to confess to having an interest in homosexual forays. Before long, they're indulging in Franz's fantasy of a stranger coming to the bed wearing an overcoat. It's sexy, diabolical and funny, all at once. While the dialogue and set-up feel stagy (all interior locations and talky battles of will) Ozon manages to deftly use bright and gaudy '70s colors in each room and retro costumes to add visual splendor to each scene. The seduction scene and forthcoming verbal sparring tends to go on and on for long stretches into the realm of tedium, the performances are so compelling and the dialogue so spry and game that you somehow manage to stick with Water Drops on Burning Rocks. After the seduction, we see them six months later in the midst of a live-in relationship gone to hell. Franz is now Leo's "housewife", cooking and cleaning and hanging up his coat for him, lighting his cigarette and scrubbing the floorboards. Leo remains dissatisfied with everything Franz does, and when it reaches the inevitable point where Franz wants to pack his bags and go, Leo does a bad job of pretending that it's their very arguments which keep him happy. Ozon's casting in his films remains masterful, arousing genuine pathos in characters who are either dumb or unsympathetic. While his plots fare better in the short form (a little goes a long way in See the Sea) and he recycles visual and story ideas to pad out his ninety minute movie, he does manage to throw in enough stuff (and two new characters midway through) to keep it moving. Besides, you always have that nifty dance number to look forward to. Sex, cruelty, fetishism - it may amount to a mere sick confection of a movie, one which is ultimately insignificant and lightweight, but it's compulsively watchable if you're game. BRANDON JUDELL PopcornQ What first comes off as a simple satire brimming with an almost John-Waters-esque absurdity, can bear far deeper scrutiny and still not come up empty. Water Drops On Burning Rocks Director: Ozon, Fran�ois Cast: Bernard Giraudeau, Malik Zidi, Ludivine Sagnier, Anna Thomson When Rainer Werner Fassbinder was 19, he wrote a play with four characters: Leopold (Giraudeau), an older gay man past his prime; Franz, an innocent 20-year-old, he brings home one night; Anna (Sagnier), Franz's lovely, highly emotional fiancee; and Vera (Thomson), an ex-love of Leopold's, who had a sex operation to keep him interested in her. It didn't work, at least not for long. Fran�ois Ozon, 32, the youthful director who's been compared to both Hitchcock and Chabrol by many a critic, has now adapted this work, and the result is a campy drawing room comedy full of powerplays, dancing, singing, and tears. It won a Teddy Award at this year's Berlin International Film Festival as Best Gay Feature of the Year, and you can see why. What first comes off as a simple satire brimming with an almost John-Waters-esque absurdity, can bear far deeper scrutiny and still not come up empty. It's in fact an incisive study of homosexuality during that still basically closeted era. Franz instantly falls in love with Leopold, giving up any claim to his former heterosexuality. He in fact adopts the poses of a seventies' long-suffering housewife, one depressed about how she's been transformed into a maid from a sex object. Then when Anna and Vera show on the scene, the real emotional battles begin. One aspect of the film though will bypass many folks. It did me until I heard Ozon interviewed on a New York radio show. It appears Fassbinder had made Leopold a Jew. Ozon didn't know why supposedly until after he completed the film. This Leopold was a survivor of a concentration camp. Now in his little apartment, he is creating his own camp where he is the commander. Whether that holds water is probably best commented on by film deconstructionists. I prefer the lighter, uniformed, and decidedly more delightful and shallow view of the project. You will too. (Brandon Judell) Awards Best Male Newcomer (nom) -Malik Zidi -2000 -French Academy of Cinema |
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| WATER DROPS ON BURNING ROCKS 2000 - France - 85 min. - Feature, Color AKA -Gouttes D'eau Sur Pierres Brulantes (Original Foreign title) Director -Fran�ois Ozon |
| Genre/Type -Drama, Gay & Lesbian Films, Erotic Drama Flags -Not For Children, Sexual Situations Keywords -apartment, bisexual, seduction, fiancee, lover, transsexual, love-quadrangle Themes -Age Disparity Romance, Gender-Bending Tones -Campy, Wry, Bittersweet, Moody Moods -Only Human, In a Minor Key From play -Tropfen auf heisse Steine Sound by -Dolby Digital/DTS Produced by -Euro Sage / Fidelite Productions / Films Alain Sarde Release -Jul 12, 2000 (USA - Limited) Released by -Zeitgeist Films [U.S.] DVD Street Date -Aug 21, 2001 Languages -French Subtitles -English Screen Formats -Letterbox for 16x9 TVs Sound -PCM Stereo Aspect Ratio -1.66:1 (DVD) Studio -Zeitgeist Video DVD Sides -1 Cast Bernard Giraudeau -- Leopold Malik Zidi -- Franz Ludivine Sagnier -- Anna Anna Thomson -- Vera |
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