Afire - Review Thread

They haven’t really gone too out of their way to highlight this in their marketing but it would appear that the German auteur Christian Petzold appears to have started making a tetralogy of films themed around the classical elements. His last film Undine was themed around water and as you can probably guess from the title this follow-up uses fire as a motif. But it’s probably best not to get too distracted by that as the film lacks the semi-supernatural elements of Undine and is instead a rather intimate look at an extremely self-conscious man as he constantly gets in his own way. The film looks at a writer in his late twenties who is traveling to a vacation home in Northeastern Germany with a friend to put the finishing touches on his second novel but when he gets there he discovers that his friend’s mother (who owns the home) is also letting a co-worker’s niece stay there, something that would not phase a normal person too much but with this guy’s introversion the unexpected dynamic really throws him off and he starts responding in ways that are rather anti-social and off putting to the people around him. It’s a pretty authentic depiction of a certain “retreat into your shell” dynamic which I’ll admit I find pretty relatable but I’m not sure how universally this is going to translate and if you don’t connect with this guy (which is challenging) I can imagine viewers not getting too into this one as it’s a pretty low key affair at least up until it’s last fifteen minutes or so when it comes more into focus, at least up to a rather cryptic final shot that I’m not sure I’ve quite processed the meaning of.