Afire Review

Leon, the main character of Christian Petzold’s new drama Afire, is a writer (pejorative). He is not a mythic tomcat of the Hemingway variety, or a dreamy Bard, or even the artist as adorkable wallflower. The romantic qualities often ascribed to the literary calling are nowhere to be found in this sullen killjoy, an anti-social lump played with only a hint of leavening, deeply buried likability by Thomas Schubert. How intolerable one finds Leon may depend on how relatable he looks –as in, the more of themselves a viewer sees in the guy, the more liable they might actually be to recoil.

Afire is set over a few days at a vacation house near the Baltic Sea in Germany. Here, Leon has decamped with a friend, Felix (Langston Uibel), a photography student sorting out his portfolio, whose theme is simply “water.” Leon, there to work on his novel, dismissively insists that water is an element, not a theme. It’s an early indication that he might not be a barrel of laughs on the trip. The next is his irritation at discovering that Leon and Felixwon’t have the place to themselves. Nadja (Paula Beers, who starred in Petzold’s last two movies, Transit and Undine) is also crashing there, and bringing her love life, loudly, to the bedroom next door.

Anyone who’s ever found themselves in the purgatorial space between work and play – turning down opportunities for fun while failing to actually put a dent in their obligations – will recognize the special agony of Leon’s procrastinating anti-vacation. Everyone is having fun on the beach, and all he can do is think about what he’s not getting done! Less sympathetic is the hostility of his insecurity. When local lothario Devid (Enno Trebs), who may be sleeping with Nadja, joins the trio for dinner, Petzold hangs on the wordless contempt Schubert expresses, before Leon’s blatant jealousy of their new companion’s carefree demeanor curdles into condescending questions about how much he makes as a lifeguard.

Afire proceeds at a low dramatic simmer that feels, at all times, like it might explode into flames (or crimes) of passion. Maybe it’s the specter of a nearby forest fire, a literary symbol that looms in the distance, begging for the kind of meaning a writer like Leon might project onto it. The possibility of a summer-fling romance hangs in the air, but will it ever be realized? Leon, as played and written, is such an incorrigible pill that he seems always to be standing in the way of the more exciting or sensational path his sojourn to the sea could take. As Nadja discovers, breaking through his protective shield of standoffishness may take some effort.

Afire is at its most withering when puncturing the delusions of its protagonist

Leon’s penchant for self-sabotage can be drolly funny, though Petzold never explicitly plays it for laughs. Superficially speaking, this is a change of pace for the German writer-director, whose last few movies have been exercises in historically freighted suspense. (Phoenix, a haunting riff on Vertigo, remains his masterpiece.) Yet if the material is lighter and more low-key, a contemporary portrait of social conflict and dysfunction, Petzold still lends it his signature psychological acuity and that economy of storytelling that makes every scene, every image feel purposeful.

There’s a meta dimension here, too – the impression of an unreliable narrator who just happens not to be narrating. How and where Afire breaks from the reality of the story it’s telling is less relevant than the sense that, at a certain point, we might be seeing Leon’s preferred version of these events. (The closing scene, especially, casts much of what came before under suspicion.) Petzold, author of numerous screenplays, knows all too well that part of the attraction of fiction is the opportunity to present the world as you think it ought to be, not as it is. Who can resist the temptation to flatter their self-image in the process?

But Afire is at its most withering when puncturing the delusions of its protagonist. Leon, always more observer than participant, clings to the implied consolation prize of his artistic superiority: While the rest of the world enjoys themselves, he can take solace in knowing he lives a richer, deeper interior life. But what if his talent at the typewriter is all smoke, no fire? A late appearance by his publisher – there to go through his novel line by line, reading it aloud with red pen in hand – is the stuff of wordsmith nightmares. No horror movie this year will inspire as much squirming unease in that demographic, the self-loathing writer (redundant).

Author: Erik Adams. [Source Link (*), IGN All]

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