Afire – first-look review

One of the most antic­i­pat­ed titles from the 2023 Berlinale’s com­pe­ti­tion slate comes from Ger­man auteur Chris­t­ian Pet­zold who reunites with actress Paula Beer, fol­low­ing her Sil­ver Bear-win­ning per­for­mance for her role as the tit­u­lar water nymph in the director’s folk myth-dri­ven romance, Undine. Afire is the sec­ond instal­ment of Petzold’s so-called ​“ele­men­tal tril­o­gy”, and marks a wel­come change of pace for the direc­tor, who returns to his home turf at the Berli­nale with a film that’s much lighter and out­ward­ly enter­tain­ing than what we’ve come to expect from him.

Two friends – Leon (Thomas Schu­bert) and Felix (Langston Uibel) – plan on spend­ing some time at a cot­tage on the Baltic coast when their car breaks down, caus­ing them to make their way through the for­est on foot. Leon, an irri­ta­ble writer mulling over the schmaltzy man­u­script on his sec­ond nov­el, is intent on repeat­ing the fact that the pur­pose of this sojourn is for work, while the more agree­able Felix, assem­bling a port­fo­lio for an art school appli­ca­tion, is hap­py to just go with the flow. 

Their arrival at the cot­tage is met with the obvi­ous signs of an unex­pect­ed third guest who’s already made her­self com­fort­able, leav­ing a trail of dish­es, left­overs and pos­ses­sions scat­tered around the home. When we final­ly do meet this ini­tial­ly elu­sive guest, revealed to be Paula Beer’s effer­ves­cent Nad­ja, she and her noc­tur­nal vis­i­tor Dev­id (Eno Terbs), who works as a res­cue swim­mer at the beach, quick­ly become close with Felix. 

Leon, on the oth­er hand, delib­er­ate­ly leaves him­self out of the group’s activ­i­ties, refus­ing every offer to let loose and opt­ing instead for a more com­fort­able res­ig­na­tion to pes­simism, pro­cras­ti­na­tion and ter­mi­nal bit­ter­ness. Sad­dled firm­ly on his high horse, the self-right­eous cyn­ic can’t seem to see the for­est for the trees. Even when the entire thing is set ablaze, all that plagues our unlike­ly pro­tag­o­nist is a crush­ing weight of uncer­tain­ty that looms in antic­i­pa­tion of his publisher’s impend­ing visit.

Hans Fromm’s cin­e­matog­ra­phy beau­ti­ful­ly cap­tures slith­ers of light peek­ing through lush foliage around the cot­tage, paint­ing a lan­guid, Rohmer­ian pic­ture of a sen­su­al sum­mer, though this post­card-per­fect image is sure to be cor­rupt­ed by the sur­round­ing for­est fires encroach­ing upon the area. Pet­zold taps into his inner Rohmer even fur­ther, embed­ding lit­er­ary ref­er­ences to Uwe John­son and Hein­rich Heine into the fab­ric of the film. 

Nadja’s recital of a short poem from Heine’s poet­ic col­lec­tion, ​‘Romanze­ro’, titled Der Asra, even pro­vides a lyri­cal frame of ref­er­ence link­ing Afire to Undine (and my tribe is the Asra / those who die, when they love), that’s visu­al­ly bol­stered by bio­lu­mi­nes­cent algae glim­mer­ing through the depths of the Baltic sea.

Afire cul­mi­nates in a mag­nif­i­cent and poet­ic study of sub­jec­tiv­i­ty, explor­ing the iso­lat­ed anx­i­eties of cre­ative labour and a simul­ta­ne­ous entan­gle­ment of supe­ri­or­i­ty and infe­ri­or­i­ty com­plex­es, adding anoth­er com­pelling and pre­cise lay­er of tex­ture to Petzold’s mul­ti­fac­eted oeuvre.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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