Who by Fire

Anyone who’s seen The Shining will know what kind of tension writer/director Philipe Lesage is building here, but this isn’t a horror film or even a conventional thriller. This is the slowest of burns, with a 155-minute runtime that could prove more intimidating to prospective viewers than anything that happens onscreen, but watching its spark travel down a live wire toward an inevitable outburst is quietly compelling. There’s nothing we can do to prevent that flame from igniting, try as we might from our side of the screen, and the characters’ ultimate tragedy is that there’s nothing they can do either.

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The first obvious-in-hindsight sign comes minutes later, as two old friends play-fight while seeing each other for the first time in years: “You always revert to force,” Albert (Paul Ahmarani) semi-playfully tells Blake (Arieh Worthalter) as a hug turns into a grappling match. They’ve just arrived at Blake’s secluded cabin in the Quebecois wilderness, where the award-winning filmmaker is hosting his former collaborator along with his teenage son Max (Antoine Marchand-Gagnon) and daughter Aloicha (Aurélia Arandi-Longpré). Tagging along is Max’s friend Jeff (Noah Parker), an aspiring filmmaker who looks up to Blake and has unspoken feelings for Aloicha — something we learn from a close-up of their hands in the backseat of that car as he nervously moves his closer to hers.

There’s more than one kind of violence, and Who by Fire is most concerned with its subtler forms. What follows from that joyous reunion unfolds largely as a series of real-time, increasingly tense conversations — a dinner-table argument between Blake and Albert, whose reasons for no longer working together slowly become clear; an ill-advised romantic pass that’s quickly rebuffed — in which the camera remains static and we feel, more and more with each raised voice, that we’re truly in the room with these people and desperate to find an exit. Not that Who by Fire is unengaging. It’s just so uncomfortable in its intimacy that merely watching it can feel like an invasion of privacy.

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Most of these exchanges are fueled by alcohol, namely wine — Albert is a connoisseur, and one of the more uncomfortable scenes concerns his growing suspicion that his finest bottle has been replaced by a cheap imitation. In vino veritas indeed, with Lesage’s characters waxing philosophical about hunting at one moment (“When I take a life, I give up some of mine”) and throwing a glassful in one another’s faces the next. The entire movie might be thought of as a dinner party that goes on for one course too long.

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Lesage invokes his influences verbally and visually, from a dog named after Swedish auteur Ingmar Bergman to explicit mention of Russian master Andrei Tarkovsky; even Aloicha is named for The Brothers Karamazov’s youngest sibling, a gender-swapped tribute befitting Albert’s overeager pretentiousness. Who by Fire’s slow-cinema bona fides aren’t in question, but a movie wearing its influences on its sleeve is a double-edged sword that invites unfavorable comparisons. Lesage isn't on Tarkovsky's level just as Jeff isn't on Blake's, but a little ambition never hurt anybody.

Merely watching it can feel like an invasion of privacy.

Named for the Leonard Cohen song of the same name, the film makes heavy, poignant use of diegetic music. One sedate scene features an acoustic singalong, while the most memorable sequence  is a “Rock Lobster” dance session so vibrant and energetic you’ll wonder why Lesage doesn’t moonlight as a music-video director. He’s finely attuned to the effect that having a second (or third, or fourth) drink has with the right (or wrong) song coming on the playlist and how different personality types react to that potent combination. For Jeff, who slowly emerges from the periphery as the protagonist – but certainly not the hero — beer tears are the best-case scenario and running into the woods for the night is somewhere near the worst.

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It’s a movie about resenting the people you love, desiring someone you can’t have, and expressing these feelings in the worst possible way. “Your kindness prevents you from believing in pure pettiness,” Albert tells everyone gathered around the dinner table one evening. No one who sees this movie will have the same problem.