Philip Lacage, director of Québécois, began making documentaries in the early thousands. It has since turned into narrative features, but it has been formed useful through his non -fictional work, in clear and exciting ways to see it. In the movie “The Demons” (2015), which was appointed during his eighty years of age, Lesage dissected the calm terror and doubts looming on his adolescence with a worrying and very disciplined observation. He studied his characters closely, but also from afar, often through a fixed camera, and allowed serials to play in length, without boycotting or accelerating the movement. Relax his style and slightly ripen it in the “Genesis” (2018), which is three stories of stories that were placed in the unbridled and unprofitable youth movement often. But even there, the drama was supported by strange monitoring and offered again to look very far away.
Thus, it is noticeable that one of the characters in the movie “Who by Fire”, a new movie, which is a new movie that emotionally roaming, is a Canadian middle -aged director who mainly followed the path of his Creator in the opposite direction. Director, Blake Cadio (Ari and Warartrara), achieved early success in directing fictional films – until he won the Academy Award – but has since retreated from the main current and is now working in documentaries. “Who by Fire” reveals over a few days and nights in a remote mountain extension from Quebec, where Blake, who has a hostel in the area, invited a handful of friends and colleagues to stay. It is never clear when the story is set, although mobile phones are clearly absent, not only because of Wi-Fi problems on height; One of the visitors, who writes a novel, brought a manual writer.
With the opening of the film, one of the guests, a screenwriter named Albert Gary (Paul Ahmarani), leads to meet Blake, and brought his daughter at the age of the college, Alisha (Aurelia Arandy Longbiper); His son, Max (Antoine Marshand Ghannun); And the friend of Max, Jeff (Noah Parker). Boys in late teenager, and Jeff, who dream of becoming film directors, eager to enhance himself with Blake, who will pick them up in a water plane and take them to the hostel. His excitement in the director’s interview is identical – and in the end, he was overlooked by excitement near Alywisha. We want these feelings almost immediately, when Jeff sits, sitting nervously next to her at the back of the car, and sliding his hand to the seat split between the leg and returning it. You can practically see his hand thinking, so with attention the camera is still on all restlessness and hesitation. You may remember this close later, when Jeff’s hand is used to use more aggressive after Aloccha refuses to share clumsy.
Lesage is concerned with such incidents of emotional injury. In fixed accumulation and sudden versions of tension, it shows the speed of surface barriers of politeness. It was not long before the meeting of Jeff Blake, mentioning a semi -biography of Blake, then raising a question about his family’s history. “You are not retreating,” Blake answers. but he Do not retreat, and Worthalter, who made the fiery defendant in the beautiful French court hall drama “The Goldman Case” (2023), peeling the smiling friendly Blake layers to detect alpha arrogant under it.
Blake and Albert are two old friends and former collaborators – the films they worked on together were their greatest professional successes – and it is clear, even before they reached the hostel, that they are in rugged unification. The first thing Blake does when they meet is the theme of Albert for an apparently harmful joke, one of Albert, a little Joker himself, laughs easily, although the hostility he supports barely disguised. Later, in The Lodge, there is a very funny sequence in which Blake increases on Albert, wrestling with the bed, and in the midst of angry protests, before him, before him. It is a vague display of male interconnection that reveals the exaggeration of performance, the clarity of the line, where the affection ends and the aggression begins.
Of course, it is aggression to come soon. “Who by Fire” is organized around three skillful dinner sequences, each of which is filmed in an interruption experience, which benefits great from the extensive the books of the movie on the screen. (Film photographer is Balthazar Lab) Blake is accused of tree to the seriousness of high tones; Albert, who is now writing for television, bears a sign of sale. Watch the camera and watches, calm down, are not parting with jamming that amplifies all anxiety.
There are others at dinner as well, and although they are often hovering over the ocean, turning in their seats and exchanging uncomfortable looks, their presence tells its own story. There is a Blake Editor, Millie (Sophie Desires), which is a calm, calm presence; Chef, Ferran (Lauren clouds); And the “spiritual evidence” of Al -Woodj, Barne (Carlo Harethha). In time, they will be joined on the table by actress Blake’s girlfriend, Helen, who is played by Irene Jacob – known for her work in KrZysztof Kieślowski’s “Double Life Veronic(1991) and “Three Colors: Red” (1994) – accompanied by her partner, Eddie (Laurent Lucas). With the wear of days and nights, these other friends Blake, by design or not, are attracted to competition with Albert.
Lesage, who was in the late 1940s, is often attracted towards turbulent youth tales, rooted in inspiring inspiration. In recent interviews, he noticed that, while “demons” and “Genesis” were inspired by personal events, “who was extracted loosely from an experience that his older brother, Jean -Francois Lesage, the documentary. Through the framework, this is the first feature of the director with a concentration between generations Gallery.
It takes some time, then, so that Jeff appears as the closest thing the film enjoys to the protagonist, almost, almost all moments of revelation occurred in nature. After his non-joint statement in Elosha, Jeff escapes to the darkness of the surrounding forest, and he spends tonight in an abandoned cabin-a potential experience, but Joom does not learn from him Jeff, frustrated and polyets, he learns almost nothing. Over and over, he is pushed to work with a combustible mixture of lust and anger – whether it is always close to the wicked Parker surface – only to find himself in a alive movie of a kind, and a confrontation with an angry that reststed the elements and the absence of his body. At different points, Blake takes his guests to fly hunting, rowing and hunting-and on every occasion, Jeff must save Jeff from himself. In most of these interventions, the two, both of which are very good to act badly, are angry with each other.
When the film was shown at the New York Film Festival, in October, critic Beatrice Louisza, Writing in Comment movieHe noted that “emotional rise and decline seems to determine the variable film patterns – as if he was already behind the camera, using the cinema to clarify what he could not say loudly.” If it is possible to read “Who by Fire” as the accusation accusation of male fragility, the Lesage, in the alignment of itself with Jeff, cannot help but also accuse himself. It may even recognize some cruelty inherent in the artistic motivation, at least as it suffers from men; Albert, scriptwriter, is barely exempt from this circle of toxic manhood. On the contrary, there is aliocha, an ambitious novelist, appears, in the performance of the very amazing Arandi-Longpré, as the least-predicted character of the film and perhaps the most interesting. I am barely unaware of her ability to reduce men to the urgent incendiary, Aleusha follows her pulse and special desires, jumps to work as the occasion requires, and in one of the historian breaks, she sings an increasing version of “Marz” by John Grant.
As in his previous films, Lesage uses music to inspire it, and sometimes a strong effect; A person puts on the “rock sea” in B-52 and the outbreak of an improvised dance party, where you find everyone’s pent-up fears a happy version, if it is temporary. The absent melody is clearly here that gives the movie its title. Leonard Cohen “Who by Fire” wanders in the inevitability of death and the inability to predict death, and its absence from the soundtrack only emphasizes the creeping excitement of these topics in the film, in which anger and regret at the end as flimsy blogs for an inevitable end. Lesage has not lost its approach to young people and its unlimited feeling. But here, amid the tall slopes and treacherous rivers, leaves his characters, and the public, wandering in the abyss. ♦
