‘Who by Fire’ Review: A Visit to the Country Turns Epically Sour in Philippe Lesage’s Powerful Ensemble Drama

It’s been almost a decade now that French-Canadian director Philippe Lesage’s intense, intricate dramas have been premiering in top festivals and receiving rave reviews from critics. And yet he unfortunately remains more or less unknown to general arthouse audiences.

Lesage began his career shooting documentaries, including the 2010 hospital chronicle The Heart That Beats, then made his first fictional feature, The Demons, in 2015, following it up in 2018 with Genesis. Both movies were coming-of-age stories — or more like cruel stories of youth, to cite the Nagisa Oshima film — helmed with laser-sharp precision and backed by formidable turns from a young cast. Fine-tuned and freewheeling at the same time, his narratives keep bubbling up until they boil over, in explosive sequences where the characters let it all out or start bellowing pop songs at will.

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He’s a gifted and original filmmaker who should be getting more attention — which is why the programming of his accomplished third feature, Who by Fire (Comme le feu), in Berlin’s Generation 14Plus sidebar, instead of in the festival’s uneven main competition, feels like a slap in the face. The fact that the movie wound up winning an international jury prize offers some consolation, but the director deserves better.

Both sprawling and exacting, optimistic and bleak, Lesage’s latest film is an ensemble piece set during one long, unwieldy holiday in a country house nestled somewhere in the pinewood forests of Quebec. It’s a picturesque location for all the chaos that unfolds among a coterie of family and friends who, as one character declares, are afflicted with a bad case of “cabin fever” during their trip.

Like Lesage’s previous movies, this one is a coming-of-age story too, although it’s about two generations: the adults who’ve compromised their dreams in order to pay the bills; and the children whose dreams risk being compromised before they even begin. Nothing is ever resolved by the end of its expansive 160 minutes, which pass by quickly enough, and none of the characters walks away unscathed. At best, their egos are put in check and they achieve some sense of self-awareness.  

The story begins when seasoned screenwriter, Albert (Paul Ahmrani), arrives at the rustic lodge of Blake (Arieh Worthalter), an acclaimed director who once won an Oscar and is now living in self-imposed exile. His house isn’t an easy place to get to, requiring a long and winding drive — set to the strumming tonal compositions of Cédric Dind-Lavoie — and then a flight over vast woodlands, with Blake himself piloting the aircraft. (Although a time period isn’t specified, the action seems to be set in the 1990s, before anyone had cell phones or social media accounts.)

Jeff is accompanied by his daughter, Aliocha (Aurelia Arandi-Longpré), and son, Max (Antoine Marchand-Gagnon), as well as by Max’s best friend, the budding filmmaker, Jeff (Noah Parker). They’re joined a day later by the actress Hélène (Irène Jacob) and her partner Eddy (Laurent Lucas), who’ve come all the way from Paris to spend a pleasant vacation with their friends in the Canadian wilderness. Wishful thinking.

During the first of three combustible dinner scenes, Albert and Blake — who once formed a successful writer-director duo — get into an epic argument in front of the other guests, rehashing old grudges and hitting each other where it hurts most. Blake claims Albert has sold out by taking on jobs as a TV writer, including showrunning a kids’ animated series called Rock Lobster. Albert mocks Blake’s pretentiousness and inflated ego while mentioning a son that the celebrated auteur has neglected.

Things aren’t going much better for the teenagers, with Jeff falling for the smart and sassy Aliocha, who doesn’t seem interested in him. But the boy won’t take no for an answer, coming on too strong and then shockingly slapping Aliocha in the face when she pushes him away, prompting him to flee to the woods and disappear for an entire night.

As the narrative progresses, Who by Fire weaves a pair of parallel, seemingly autobiographical stories, or rather the same story told from different points in one’s life. The first concerns filmmakers who once did their best work together and are now past their prime, living with a fair amount of bitterness and regret. (We learn that Blake switched from making features to documentaries, which is the opposite of what Lesage himself has done.) The other one is about aspiring young artists — like her father, Aliocha wants to write, while Jeff wants to become a famous director like Blake — confronted over the holiday with the hypocrisy of adults and the pangs of adolescent love.

Moving between the house and surrounding forest, which seems to stretch on infinitely, the drama crescendos several times as the characters keep attacking one another, although there are also moments of respite when they just sit around and hang out, getting drunk and wild late into the night. In one of the film’s highlights, someone throws on a record of The B-52’s “Rock Lobster” — shoutout to Albert’s corny kids’ show — and the entire cast breaks out into an exhilarating lip-sync dance led by Blake’s otherwise shy assistant, Millie (Sophie Desmarais, Sarah Prefers to Run).

But that doesn’t manage to stifle the tension, which builds and builds until exploding during a pair of outdoors scenes — a hunting expedition and a canoe trip — that become matters of life or death. Captured in crisp widescreen images by Balthazar Lab (La Jauria), the characters have it out against a backdrop of lush Canadian scenery where we lose them in the landscape, only to find them again within the same image. Editor Mathieu Bouchard-Malo allows sequences to play out in their entirety, with the mood gradually shifting from casual to uncomfortable to downright tense in a single shot.

As is custom for Lesage, the cast is a mix of Quebecois and French talents. Gallic vets Jacob (Three Colors: Red) and Lucas (Lemming) play third-party observers to all the mayhem, and their characters wind up paying dearly for it. Local star Ahmrani and Belgian actor Worthlater (a César award winner this year for The Goldman Case) face off in several fierce confrontations that feel so natural they could have been improvised. Blake, who may or not be a surrogate for Lesage, comes across as a total narcissist, although a late scene involving his dog (named “Bergman,” naturally) reveals him to be a broken man filled with vulnerability. All three younger actors are terrific, with the ebullient Arandi-Longpré standing out as a teenage girl who refuses to be hemmed in by the bruised male egos surrounding her.  

The film’s English title refences the great song by Canadian singer Leonard Cohen, which begins with the lyrics: “And who by fire/who by water/who in the sunshine/who in the nighttime.” It’s an apt description of the many baptisms the characters go through in the movie, battling the elements and one another. If certain adults barely make it out alive and all of them are unlikely, in any case, to change much, the kids emerge more mature from their experiences, licking their wounds and ready to face what comes next. They’re both the true victims in Who by Fire and the only ones who leave us feeling hopeful.