The Seductive Powers of Francois Ozon

The Nuart’s “The Films of Francois Ozon” presents two new features by France’s fearless explorer of human sexuality. “Water Drops on Burning Rocks” opens Friday, running through Aug. 17. It will be followed by “Criminal Lovers,” which plays Aug. 18-24. Screening on Aug. 19, at noon only, will be “Sitcom” (1997); on Aug. 20, also at noon only, “See the Sea” (1996), with the short “A Summer Dress” (1995).

With “Water Drops” Ozon elegantly brings to the screen a play R.W. Fassbinder wrote when he was 19. A work of strikingly composed images, deft pacing and camera movement, it intensifies rather than dissipates the impact of the drama’s single setting, a well-appointed city apartment decorated tastefully in a late-’60s/early ‘70s style. A well-built middle-aged businessman, Leo (Bernard Giraudeau) has brought home with him a slim, pale, good-looking 20-year-old, Franz (Malik Zidi), a seeming innocent, who is swiftly seduced by Leo.

In short order, Franz moves in and becomes a dutiful spouse. Apparently an insurance salesman, Leo comes home at night a classic tired businessman--with a relentlessly fussy perfectionist streak. It matters not that Franz has dusted, vacuumed and waxed the floor, because he didn’t think to go over the floor with steel wool before applying a new coat of wax. But for all his prissiness, Leo is apparently a phenomenally skilled lover, and Franz is so overwhelmed by great sex that he has fallen hopelessly in love with the older man.

Giraudeau, the suave seducer in countless French films, is perfect as Leo, a man of infinite power over others but totally lacking in a capacity for feeling, and Zidi is an impeccable Franz, whose ability to love renders him totally vulnerable.

In tone and style, “Criminal Lovers” is radically different. It opens shockingly with 17-year-old Luc (Jeremie Renier) coming upon his girlfriend Alice (Natacha Regnier) in the throes of feverish sex with their classmate Said (Salim Kechiouche) on the restroom floor of the boy’s gym, provoking the jealous Luc into stabbing the Arab youth to death. The bloody incident provides fodder for the manipulative Alice’s diary, which reads like pages torn out of a Dennis Cooper novel. “You used to complain that nothing ever happened,” remarks Alice nonchalantly, adding, “you ought to be happy now” as they bury Said’s corpse in a forest that proves as dangerous as that of “The Blair Witch Project.”

While Leo and Alice both exude a lethal sexual power over others, the first film comes across as a sad but darkly funny and wise chamber drama, the second becomes so extravagantly brutal and humorlessly over the top, for all its psychosexual insights. Like Leo, Alice is a monster, with poor Luc paying a hideous price.

“Sitcom” centers on a very Claude Chabrol-like family, a wealthy couple who live in a fine 19th century manor with an interior decorated in the kind of impeccably restrained good taste extolled by Martha Stewart. Indeed, Heleene, the chic, attractive wife and mother, is the kind of role that Chabrol’s ex-wife and frequent star, Stephane Audran, often played: the relentlessly efficient, middle-aged, upper-middle-class woman to whom there’s more than meets the eye. Helene has a self-absorbed husband, Jean (Francois Marthouret), and two willful children, the marriageable Sophie (Marina de Van) and the teenage Nicholes (Adrien de Van). The family is no more and no less functional than many--until Jean brings home a caged white rat as a pet. Mere contact with the rat unleashes in one and all hidden sexual desires and psychological quirks, and “Sitcom” swiftly emerges as a darkly outrageous satirical farce.

“See the Sea” and “A Summer Dress” possess an understated style that sets off a mature mastery of tone and mood. The first is only 52 minutes, the second just 15; they add up to a fully satisfying experience. Whether serious or humorous or anywhere in between, Ozon reveals a sure grasp of how to express psychological drama. Hitchcock himself might well have been impressed with the seemingly casual yet superbly controlled “See the Sea.” A lovely young woman, Sasha (Sasha Hails), eagerly awaits the arrival of her husband from Paris to their handsome beach house sitting open and isolated on a large and beautiful stretch of land.

In the meantime, Sasha, alone with their 10-month-old baby daughter, is a bit bored and lonely. So when a solemn, scruffy young woman, Tatiana (Marina de Van), with a backpack knocks on her door and asks to pitch her tent in her yard for several days, Sasha disregards her initial wariness, seeing in the stranger her own carefree time before marriage and motherhood.

Meanwhile, the enigmatic Tatiana is likely to strike you as creepy and disturbing, and when in the privacy of Sasha’s bathroom she pulls a singularly gross prank, we really start to worry.

Yet there’s no guessing as to what Ozon has in store--is it a sexual encounter between the women or something more ominous?--but he certainly knows how to create suspense. When he at last arrives at a moment of truth, we realize that though we couldn’t have foretold the conclusion precisely, we appreciate in retrospect all the subtle foreshadowing.

“A Summer Dress” is a clever, lighthearted curtain-raiser, also set at the beach, and celebrating the positive effect of the discovery of sexual variety. Frederic Mangenot plays a handsome 18-year-old vaguely annoyed at his bleach-blond boyfriend’s campy lip-syncing and dancing--what might the neighbors think? This propels him to head for the beach for a skinny-dip in the sea and an unexpected adventure that leaves him more secure and accepting of his sexuality. “A Summer Dress” has been made with no less skill and insight than “See the Sea.” (310) 478-6379.