Water Drops on Burning Rocks

In 1970s Germany, Léopold, a successful businessman around fifty, approaches Franz, a naive young man roughly thirty years his junior, on the street and invites him home. Franz, who is engaged to a woman, gives in to curiosity and moves into Léopold's apartment. What begins as an affair turns into a lopsided domestic arrangement, with Léopold controlling and provoking his younger partner as the two settle into a stifling routine. The arrival of their former girlfriends, Anna and Véra, disrupts the household and forces the men to confront how far apart they have grown.

The film is directed by François Ozon, who wrote the screenplay with Rainer Werner Fassbinder; it adapts a Fassbinder stage text that was never performed in his lifetime. It was Ozon's second feature, following Fingers on the Belly and preceding Under the Sand. Bernard Giraudeau plays Léopold, Malik Zidi plays Franz, and Ludivine Sagnier and Anna Thomson appear as Anna and Véra. The production was a French-Japanese co-production.

On IMDb the film holds a rating of 6.7 from roughly 7,300 votes, and on TMDB 6.4 from about 136 votes, suggesting a modest but settled following. A critics' rating of 6.6 from 24 reviews places it close to the audience scores.