Water drops on burning rocks = Gouttes d'eau sur pierres brulantes

Based on Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s play “Tropfen auf hiesse Steine” this richly perverse and very funny sex comedy stars Bernard Giraudeau as Leopold, an ultra successful and ultra conservative businessman who seduces the young Franz. But when Franz moves in, all expectations are overturned when it is Leopold who refuses to compromise to Franz’s old fashioned sense of morality and domesticity. Franz turns to his ex-girlfriend for comfort but she too ends up falling for Leopold’s cold seductive charms. Their bizarre menage-a-trois is then interrupted when Leopold’s ex, Vera, a male to female transsexual, comes for a visit. Rather than needlessly “opening up” the original play’s stagebound scenes, Ozon instead creates a slightly surreal enclosed space in which the four actors are able to create characters both bizarre but also strikingly realistic. The crisp, imaginative direction allows for both the humour of the original play, as well as its cruelty, to be fully expressed. A wonderfully fresh and stylish comedy of manners, “Water Drops on Burning Rocks” is a splendid example of how queer cinema can transgress both heterosexual and homosexual normative ideals. Cast includes Malik Zidi, Ludivine Sagnier and Anna Levine. In French with English subtitles.