Afire

Thomas Schubert and Paula Beer

Christian Petzold's Afire is another terrific film from one of the premier auteurs of this century. We meet Leon (Thomas Schubert), a young writer, and Felix (Langston Uibel), a budding photographer, as they travel to Felix's family vacation home on the Baltic Sea. There they hope to work on their respective projects in solitude, but their plans go awry. First their car breaks down and then they discover that Felix's mother has sublet the home to a young woman named Nadja (Paula Beer). The sullen Leon especially resents this imposition and behaves like a spoiled brat towards both Felix and Nadja.

Leon is quite taken with the alluring Nadja, but is too pig-headed and boorish to try to charm her. He spies a hunky lifeguard leaving the house one night and assumes he is Nadja's boyfriend; one of many mistaken assumptions he makes about Nadja. The lifeguard, named Devid, is befriended by Felix, further alienating Leon. Petzold stresses the apartness of Leon, a bearish young man not comfortable in his own skin. Leon is hyper-sensitive, a boon for a writer, but one of the main factors reasons behind his social awkwardness. Leon is shown to be a voyeur, spying from a distance on his companions and Petzold's stresses Leon's essential isolation with many distant shots from Leon's POV. 

As the vacationing young folk juggle their elective affinities, environmental disaster looms in the background. A huge forest fire is rampaging and eventually threatens our protagonists. Yet, Petzold does not ultimately view the romantic roundelays of his cast as a case of fiddling while Rome burns. He views love as perhaps our only means of salvation as disaster looms. Even a churlish schlub like Leon can be redeemed by caring for others. His love for Nadja breaks him out of his shell and allows him to be a more open and empathic being. Nadja does not coddle Leon, she is forthright in telling him his current manuscript is shite, but her candor helps free him to be a better writer and human. 

That said, I'm not sure Petzold really earns his invocation of Rossellini's Voyage to Italy when he shows us the entwined lovers' remains left by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius. It synchs nicely with the tragic aspects of his own film, but feels a little tacked on. I do think he has succeeded in creating a thoughtful bourgeoise romance in the spirit of Eric Rohmer, his avowed model for this film. Afire captures the seaside Romantic quakes and aches of such Rohmer films as Pauline a la plage and Le rayon vert.