(Gouttes d'eau sur pierres brûlantes)
Directed by François Ozon
88 minutes
In French with English subtitles

When German film Director Rainer Werner Fassbinder was only 19 years old and still creating only theater, he wrote the script that this movie is based on. This version is recreated by François Ozon, and zeroes in on a 50 year old businessman named Leopold who picks up a young rosy cheeked boy named Franz. At first it looks like it isn't going to work out, especially since young Franz is hetero and has a girlfriend, but in the end a relationship starts. But that is just the beginning of the story, because it leads to an entire series of various sexual relationships involving past and future lovers.

This flick is a wild cinematic rollercoaster of crazy sexuality, relationship experimentation, confusion, jealousy, passion, absurdity. It is a chamber piece (like Fassbinder's later Petra von Kant) with high emotions, weirdness and unexpected twists-and-turns at full throttle. The film is very sexy on many levels but also sometimes cruel, and has a sharp sense of black humor. It is wonderful in how it explores power games and relationships that happen in real life, but are rarely seen in cinema. That was Fassbinder's forte. The cast gathered together by director Ozon is pretty perfect, which is true of most of his films. Supposedly the entire farce is set in Germany of the 1970s, but the vibe is totally French. 

Expect a lot of kink, music by Françoise Hardy and Mahler, bizarre disco dance sequences, and extremely LGBTQ+ encounters. In the end, the film doesn't feel like it's trans in only one way, but in loads of variations and directions.