Μύ 
To a young film enthusiast growing up in the late 1960s and early 70s - still young enough to be hugely impressed by the shock of the new but too young to have devoured the French New Wave - the work of Rainer Werner Fassbinder (and certain of his German New Wave cohorts) revealed that cinema could be bent and twisted into all manner of interesting shapes. A tyrannical drug addict who died of an overdose at 36, Fassbinder was also one of the most creative forces in post-war European cinema and regularly transfixed audiences with films which honed in on the bleakness and the sourness of the human condition. These were often films which were static, hanging for their impact on ambiguous characters and rich dialogue.
"Water Drops On Burning Rocks" was a play written, but never performed or filmed, by the 19-year-old Fassbinder, and his lifelong creative absorption in mind-games, manipulation and the cynicism of relationships is already abundantly clear. A gawky young man is picked up by a middle-aged homosexual, they move in together, and their relationship first teeters, then becomes more complex when the two men's girlfriends come to visit. The ebb and flow of this knot of relationships is this very theatrical film's central focus, and French director François Ozon never tries to hide the staginess (or the sex).
Extraordinary though it is that the teenage German talent already had such a twisted view of relationships, it is easy to see why he left this play on the shelf. Despite some mesmerising acting (particularly from Bernard Giraudeau as the cold, hostile egotist), both characters and situation are little more than routine; mind you, at least the director stuck to the unflashy theatricality of Fassbinder, instead of buzzing around the set with a camera in order to cover the cracks.
