Leopold, a smug, still-hunky 50-year-old businessman, picks up and seduces fresh-faced, carrot-topped 19-year-old Franz who swiftly moves into his bachelor pad. Their cozy relationship soon sours as Leopold, a kind of gone-to-seed Dirk Bogarde, turns cranky and argumentative. When Franz's buxom blond girlfriend surfaces, and then Leopold's elegant and enigmatic ex, things get funnier, steamier and a lot more complicated. Set in Germany in the '70s, and brilliantly adapted from a play by the great R.W. Fassbinder, by one of France's most daring and innovative new directors, WATER DROPS ON BURNING ROCKS is fraught with intimations of violence, betrayal, and sexual shenanigans run amok.
