WATER DROPS ON BURNING ROCKS

(2000) dir. Francois Ozon; 82min.

FRIDAY, September 30th at 7 & 9:30pm

SATURDAY, October 1st at 7 & 9:30pm

SUNDAY, October 2nd at 3pm

Germany, the '70s. Leopold, a smug, still-hunky 50-year-old businessman, picks up and seduces fresh-faced, carrot-topped 19-year-old Franz who swiftly moves into his bachelor pad. Their cozy relationship soon sours as Leopold, a kind of gone-to-seed Dirk Bogarde, turns cranky and argumentative. When Franz’s buxom blond girlfriend surfaces, and then Leopold’s elegant and enigmatic ex, things get funnier, steamier and a lot more complicated. Fassbinder blazed to glory in the 1970s and early 80s with dozens of movies that charted the relationship between sex and power, in and out of the bedroom. As with his best work, Water Drops on Burning Rocks—brilliantly adapted by one of France's most daring and innovative new directors—is fraught with intimations of violence, irony, betrayal, and sexual shenanigans run amok.