Water Drops on Burning Rocks

A quick plug for François Ozon's Water Drops on Burning Rocks, which is screening on campus on Saturday, Oct. 28. Adapted from a play by Werner Fassbinder (written when he was a wunderkindish 19), the movie's a look--make that ruthless stare--at the way love quickly settles into a pas de deux of dominance and submission. A young man is invited back to a middle-aged man's apartment, and before you know it they're husband and wife, the young man miserably in love with the middle-aged man, who treats him like dirt. The movie's scenario, squeezed into that single apartment, might be a bit much if it weren't for Ozon's determination to depict the whole sad affair as the most natural thing in the world.