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Summary
Germany in the 1970s. Whilst waiting for his girlfriend, a young student, Franz,
allows himself to be picked up by 50-year old businessman, Léopold. In his
apartment, Léopold provokes Franz into revealing his homosexual experiences and
soon manages to seduce him. Six months later, Frantz has moved in with Léopold
and they appear to live as an ordinary married couple. The strain is beginning to
show, however, and after a row Frantz threatens to leave. Whilst Léopold
is away, Frantz is visited by his former girlfriend, Anna, and their romance is soon rekindled.
Before the two lovers can escape, Léopold returns and his charms persuade Anna
to stay. Léopold’s ex-lover Vera then makes an unexpected appearance
and the menagerie is complete...
Review
Freely adapted from an obscure play by the famed German director R.W. Fassbinder (written
when he was just 19), Gouttes d'eau sur pierres brûlantes makes a deeply
pessimistic yet profoundly incisive study of the destructive power of human sexuality.
It was directed by François Ozon, who has achieved international acclaim and celebrity
– at a remarkably young age – for his distinctive, almost totally unclassifiable style
of cinema. Ozon’s films, of which this is a fairly representative example, merge
black comedy, drama and satire, and invariably involve themes of a dark, deeply perturbing
sexual nature, portrayed in an oddly playful and up-beat manner. The film’s minimalist
cast is headed by Bernard Giraudeau and Malik Zidi, each of whom skilfully manages to
mesmerise the audience with his acting performance, making this a particularly memorable
entry in the Ozon canon.
In some ways, Gouttes d'eau sur pierres brûlantes appears to retread ground
covered in Ozon’s previous film, Les
Amants criminels. Both films resemble a blacker-than-black gay fantasy in
which an attractive young man finds himself imprisoned and sexually subjugated to an older
man. However, whereas Les Amants criminals gets tangled up by its implausible
plot (which seems incapable of reconciling its fantastic and realist elements), Gouttes
d'eau sur pierres brûlantes is a much more coherent and intelligent work, mainly
because it is anchored so rigidly within a confined universe of its director’s own making.
As Ozon has demonstrated in his subsequent films, he is much more effective when he restricts
himself to an enclosed space with a relatively small number of characters. Whilst
this formula may appear limiting, Ozon has shown that it is anything but, evidenced by
the startling variety amongst such films as Sitcom
, Sous le sable and 8
femmes, not to mention the naughtiest of them all, Gouttes d'eau sur pierres
brûlantes.
Gouttes d'eau sur pierres brûlantes is arguably the most typical of Ozon’s
films. It contains a number of themes which recur in many of his other films and
it also perhaps reveals most about its director. The film is essentially concerned
with the impossibility of human beings to be satisfied in love. Sex may be the means
by which romantic love is originated and initially sustained, but in the end it becomes
no more than an instrument, enabling a dominant type to exert control over his weaker
victims. After the near-lyrical seduction of Frantz by Léopold (which Ozon
films with something approaching genius), we see how their relationship has developed
six months on - the submissive, idealistic Frantz has become no more than a slave to the
dominant, ill-tempered Léopold. It may initially appear to be a grotesque
caricature of normal married life, but it is not too wide off the mark, and what follows
(arguments, break-up, an affair) gets painfully closer and closer to everyday realism.
As has become an Ozon trademark, Gouttes d'eau sur pierres brûlantes goes
off in some totally unexpected directions and frequently wrong-foots the audience.
Just as the film looks as if it might be heading towards melodrama (with Léopold
about to discover Frantz’s plan to elope with Anna), it explodes into wild bedroom farce,
which includes an outrageous (and totally unexpected) musical sequence (a prelude to what
we see in Ozon's later film, 8 femmes). This is nothing less than an insane
spoof of a banal situation comedy - a parody of a parody. However, Monsieur
Ozon has a few more cards to play and he is not going to allow his audience to enjoy this
light diversion for too long. The farce suddenly evaporates and is replaced by something
much darker, much more introspective and disturbing. The folly of physical love
- its destructive power, its sheer pointlessness - is exposed in an emotionally taut sequence
which culminates in an overly theatrical death and some powerful moments of reflection.
It is a chillingly misanthropic view of life, love and human relationships - chilling
because it is so close to reality, cruelly exposing one of the great flaws in human existence.
Gouttes d'eau sur pierres brûlantes has allowed François Ozon to develop
and refine his approach to film making, to the point that he must now surely be considered
one of France’s most intelligent, imaginative and technically competent film directors.
An auteur in the truest sense of the word, Ozon has conceived a new, exciting and totally
unpredictable style of cinema which - judging by the success of some of his subsequent
films (notably 8 femmes) - is proving to have a greater impact and far wider appeal
than one might have expected.
© James Travers 2003
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