The Québécois manager Philippe Lesage began making documentaries successful the aboriginal two-thousands. He has since switched to communicative features, but they person been meaningfully shaped by his nonfiction work, successful ways some plain and thrilling to see. In “The Demons” (2015), acceptable during the nineteen-eighties, Lesage anatomized the quiescent terrors and looming uncertainties of his ain preadolescence with an unsettling, highly disciplined watchfulness. He studied his characters up adjacent but besides from afar, often via a fixed camera, and helium allowed sequences to play retired astatine length, without interrupting the enactment oregon hurrying it along. His benignant relaxed and ripened a spot successful “Genesis” (2018), a wrenching trio of stories acceptable successful question by the unruly and often unrequited yearnings of youth. But adjacent determination the play was powered by an eerie strength of reflection and again displayed a reluctance to look distant excessively soon.
And truthful it feels notable that 1 of the characters successful “Who by Fire,” Lesage’s patient, emotionally roiling caller film, is simply a middle-aged Canadian manager who has fundamentally followed his creator’s trajectory successful reverse. The director, Blake Cadieux (Arieh Worthalter), had aboriginal occurrence directing fabrication films—he adjacent won an Oscar—but helium has since retreated from the mainstream and present works successful documentaries. “Who by Fire” unfolds implicit a fewer days and nights successful a remote, mountainous agelong of Quebec, wherever Blake, who owns a lodge successful the area, has invited a fistful of friends and colleagues to stay. It’s ne'er wide precisely erstwhile the communicative is set, though cellphones are visibly absent, and not conscionable due to the fact that of high-altitude Wi-Fi issues; 1 visitor, who’s penning a novel, has brought on a manual typewriter.
As the movie opens, 1 of the guests, a screenwriter named Albert Gary (Paul Ahmarani), is driving to conscionable Blake, and has brought on his college-aged daughter, Aliocha (Aurélia Arandi-Longpré); his son, Max (Antoine Marchand-Gagnon); and Max’s friend, Jeff (Noah Parker). The boys are successful their precocious teens, and Jeff, who dreams of becoming a filmmaker, is anxious to ingratiate himself with Blake, who volition prime them up successful a seaplane and instrumentality them to the lodge. His excitement astatine gathering the manager is matched—and, ultimately, surpassed—by his excitement astatine proximity to Aliocha. We’re clued successful to those feelings astir immediately, erstwhile Jeff, nervously sitting adjacent to her successful the backmost of the car, slips his manus into the spot crevice betwixt his limb and hers. You tin practically spot his manus thinking, truthful intently does the camera linger connected its each fidget and hesitation. You whitethorn retrieve this closeup later, erstwhile Jeff’s manus is enactment to much assertive usage aft Aliocha rebuffs his clumsy come-on.
Lesage is attentive to specified bursts of affectional whiplash; successful dependable buildups and abrupt releases of tension, helium shows however rapidly superficial barriers of politeness tin autumn away. Not agelong aft Jeff meets Blake, helium mentions a semi-autobiographical movie of Blake’s and past poses a too-forward question astir his household history. “You don’t clasp back,” Blake replies. But he doesn’t clasp back, either, and Worthalter, who made a fiery suspect successful the good French courtroom play “The Goldman Case” (2023), peels backmost Blake’s friendly, smiling layers to uncover an arrogant alpha beneath.
Blake and Albert are aged friends and erstwhile collaborators—the films they worked connected unneurotic were their top vocation successes—and it’s clear, adjacent earlier they get to the lodge, that they are successful for a bumpy reunion. The archetypal happening Blake does erstwhile they conscionable is taxable Albert to a seemingly harmless prank, 1 that Albert, a spot of a joker himself, easy laughs off, though the hostility that underpins it is hardly disguised. Later, astatine the lodge, there’s an unnervingly comic series successful which Blake overpowers Albert, wrestles him onto a bed, and, amid exasperated protests, kisses his exposed paunch. It’s a rambunctious show of antheral bonding whose performative exaggeration is revealing, blurring the enactment wherever affection ends and aggression begins.
Of course, it is aggression that soon comes to the fore. “Who by Fire” is structured astir 3 skillfully modulated meal sequences, each of which is filmed successful an uninterrupted instrumentality that makes superb usage of the film’s capacious wide-screen compositions. (The cinematographer is Balthazar Lab.) Blake and Albert, their tongues loosened by wine, reopen and past scratch viciously astatine aged wounds, calling retired idiosyncratic failures and nonrecreational betrayals. Blake is accused of having drifted into high-toned seriousness; Albert, present penning for television, is branded a sellout. The camera watches and watches, its calm, unblinking stasis amplifying each anxiety.
There are others astatine dinner, too, and though they mostly hover astatine the periphery, shifting successful their seats and exchanging uncomfortable glances, their beingness tells a communicative of its own. There is Blake’s editor, Millie (Sophie Desmarais), a softly soothing presence; a chef, Ferran (Guillaume Laurin); and the lodge’s “spiritual guide,” Barney (Carlo Harrietha). In time, they volition beryllium joined astatine the array by Blake’s histrion friend, Hélène, who is played by Irène Jacob—best known for her enactment successful Krzysztof Kieślowski’s “The Double Life of Véronique” (1991) and “Three Colors: Red” (1994)—and is accompanied by her partner, Eddy (Laurent Lucas). As the days and nights deterioration on, these different friends of Blake’s, by plan oregon not, get drawn into the rivalry with Albert. They besides service to punctual him, done their easygoing jollity with their host, that the past is precise overmuch the past, and this travel down representation lane volition beryllium remembered arsenic a brief, disfigured blip. Blake has moved on.
Lesage, who is successful his precocious forties, has often gravitated toward turbulent tales of youth, rooted successful autobiographical inspirations. In caller interviews, he’s noted that, whereas “The Demons” and “Genesis” were inspired by idiosyncratic events, “Who by Fire” was loosely drawn from an acquisition recounted to him by his older brother, Jean-François Lesage, a documentary filmmaker. That whitethorn explicate wherefore it’s initially tricky to get a grip connected the story’s constituent of affectional identification; the younger Lesage’s sympathies consciousness much ambiguously dispersed retired than usual, much evenly dispersed crossed the frame. This is the archetypal of the director’s features I’ve seen with a genuinely intergenerational focus, successful which older characters registry arsenic much than conscionable distant, inattentive figures. Despite its constricted, isolated setting, the movie feels much psychologically expansive than its predecessors; the characters are continually, and often surprisingly, repositioned successful narration to 1 another, and whenever the hostility threatens to crook claustrophobic, the large outdoors beckon.
It takes a spot of time, then, for Jeff to look arsenic the closest happening the movie has to a protagonist, and tellingly, astir each those moments of revelation hap successful nature. After his ill-advised walk astatine Aliocha, Jeff flees into the acheronian of the surrounding forest, gets lost, and spends the nighttime astatine an abandoned cabin—a perchance chastening experience, but 1 from which Jeff, frustrated and petulant, learns astir nothing. Again and again, helium is propelled into enactment by a combustible premix of lust and anger—both ever adjacent to the aboveground of Parker’s fiercely expressive performance—only to find himself successful a endurance thriller of sorts, confronted with the unyielding fury of the elements and the inadequacy of his ain body. At assorted points, Blake takes his guests fly-fishing, canoeing, and hunting—and, connected each occasion, has to rescue Jeff from himself. In the astir heightened of these interventions, the 2 of them, some precise bully astatine behaving badly, crook their ain rage against each other.
When the movie was screened astatine the New York Film Festival, successful October, the professional Beatrice Loayza, penning successful Film Comment, astutely pointed retired that Jeff’s “emotional ups and downs look to find the film’s shifting styles—it’s arsenic if helium were already down the camera, utilizing cinema to articulate what helium could ne'er accidental aloud.” If “Who by Fire” tin beryllium work arsenic an indictment of antheral fragility, past Lesage, successful aligning himself with Jeff, cannot assistance but besides indict himself. He whitethorn adjacent beryllium acknowledging immoderate inherent cruelty successful the creator impulse, astatine slightest arsenic it’s experienced by men; Albert, a screenwriter, is hardly exempted from this ellipse of toxic manhood. By contrast, determination is Aliocha, an aspiring novelist, who emerges, successful Arandi-Longpré’s supremely watchful performance, arsenic the film’s slightest predictable quality and possibly the astir interesting. Hardly unaware of her quality to trim men to blithering idiots, Aliocha follows her ain impulses and desires, leaps into enactment arsenic the juncture demands, and, successful 1 haunting interlude, sings a quavering mentation of John Grant’s “Marz”—a bittersweet look of nostalgia for earlier, much guiltless days of youth.
As successful his erstwhile films, Lesage uses euphony to inspired, sometimes incongruously almighty effect; idiosyncratic puts connected the B-52’s “Rock Lobster” and an impromptu creation enactment erupts, successful which everyone’s pent-up anxieties find a joyous, if temporary, release. The conspicuously absent tune present is the 1 that gives the movie its title. Leonard Cohen’s “Who by Fire” ruminates connected the inevitability and unpredictability of death, and its lack from the soundtrack lone underscores the creeping insidiousness of those themes successful the film, successful which rage and regret are yet exposed arsenic flimsy bulwarks against an inescapable end. Lesage hasn’t mislaid his affinity for younker and its limitless consciousness of possibility. But here, amid towering cliffs and treacherous rivers, helium leaves his characters, and the audience, astride an abyss. ♦
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