Water Drops on Burning Rocks (2000)

Such a frustrating disappointment

Just perfect...

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Yes its indeed a beautiful film. The actors have done a fabulous job. I know how it is to be hopelessly in love with someone that you will go to any extent to come out of that pain of loneliness, once he/she doesn't remain the same person you once fell in love with. When you are lonely in life you tend to develop a special bond with that person who is most closest to you at that point of time. Eventually you end up loving that person so much that everything in front of you seems so immaterial and superficial. That's what this film is about; loneliness, friendships, relationships, lust, craving for love and all. Honestly, I saw this film on DVD and I rented it for only some hot and sensuous scenes but then I was taken aback by its storyline. Its amazing how Francois Ozon made this film with only 4 actors and yet managed to capture the everyday emotions of a regular married/living together couple (homo/heterosexual) with panache. I ended up watching a beautiful film.

In this highly unusual film, Bernard Giraudeau perfectly embodies the ophidian lure of the subtle dominator...which engenders a good deal of sympathy for the young man experiencing the ongoing regimen of psychological manipulation, brainwashing, and downright torture imposed on him. M. Giraudeau is a wonderful actor, probably one of the very few who could portray this character. I could not help thinking that his Leopold is exactly like M. Delamont, the sinister and tyrannizing character who drove his young "employee" to murder in "A Matter of Taste", released the same year as this film. This film almost seems a prequel: as if Leopold changed his name to M. Delamont, refined his techniques enough to cause the events leading to his own well-merited demise in "a Matter of Taste." Bravo, M. Giraudeau. I can't imagine anyone else being able to play either of these difficult, fascinating and repellant roles.

I watched this film because I am a fan of Ozon's quirky, witty, surprisingly deep work. As some have mentioned, this bears some similarity to 8 WOMEN, but this actually works better, due to a more complex script. (Ludivine Sagnier, of the boyish face and the hottie-girl body, played the tomboy in that.)Every element here works on a level of being both interesting and stomach-turning. This is one of the very few works I have ever seen that captures the reality of the "free love" 70s; that it really only "worked" for those who were heartless users willing to play games with other people's lives for their own fleeting desire. Ludivine Sagnier, is not at her acting peak here, and part of what is stomach turning is that she is so beautiful, but possibly underage when she shot this film... (she was 20 when it was released), it completes the "outside looking in" voyeurism of the film. The patently absurd casting of the "mysterious lady" with a very female, if enhanced, beauty (Anna Levine) completes the kind of fantasy world where people enmeshed in a menage a quatre could stop to take a break to dance. Exceptionally fine performances by Levine and the young male lead take this frothy sexcapade into much deeper territory that is the truth of that generation. (For oceanic depth, see Ozon's SWIMMING POOL which is a brilliant discussion of the creation of art.) Vintage Ozon.

If this film was supposed to be surrealistic, it failed. I think surrealism in movies can be used effectively in two ways: either to make sense and have a point to make (like in Bunuel's La fantome de liberte) or to make no sense at all and leave the result open to all kinds of interpretations (like in Bunuel's Un chien andalou). What we have here is a director desperately trying to impress us using surrealism over a really weak script. Moreover, the man's mistress' character seems rather misplaced or not fully portrayed, while the rest of the characters' motives are not always explained. Ok, that's what surrealism is about: it doesn't have to make sense. Yet I believe surrealism does not suit this kind of plot. I believe it would have been better if more time had been taken to analyze each character's personality more thoroughly.The actors were quite convincing which cannot be equally said about the actresses in this movie. Overall watching this film left me very unsatisfied.3