Who By Fire (Philippe Lesage, Canada)

By Vicky Huang

The opening sequence of Philippe Lesage’s Who By Fire tails a lonesome car across the great Quebecois expanse. Steering the vehicle is Albert (Paul Ahmarani), a washed-up screenwriter, while his two kids, Max (Antoine Marchand-Gagnon) and Aliocha (Aurelia Arandi-Longpré), as well as their close friend Jeff (Noah Parker), are crammed in the back. A close-up observes Jeff’s trembling hand as it slowly inches towards Aliocha’s. But just as he’s about to make contact, she unintentionally (?) pulls away, leaving him flushed, nervous, and defeated. A romantic secret is left lingering in the Canadian wilderness; for the rest of the film, Jeff will search, tirelessly, for a way to express it.

The car is headed for a remote cabin owned by Albert’s documentarian pal Blake (Arieh Worthalter). Once a dialectical duo—with the former as an archetypal mousy screenwriter, and the latter playing the part of a smug and cocky director—their creative collaboration quickly disintegrated after an aesthetic dispute. Now, a couple of icy years later, the pair reunite for an ostensible detente with friends and family in tow.

Old grudges die hard: caustic quips and snarky remarks reveal that Blake and Albert haven’t exactly moved on from the past. Their jabs are padded by the machinations of male ego: ressentiment masked by passive aggression, silent jousts for power, brooding, plotting, scheming and pranking. With great formal control, Lesage—a former documentarian alert to the potential of long takes—keeps these tensions at a simmer during the day, allowing the hurt to swell and ripen, only to release them over the course of three dinner sequences during which Albert and Blake’s banter devolves into spite, and worse. Years of pent up loathing are coaxed out by glasses of fine wine and poached meat; Blake belittles Albert’s perceived sell-out, while Albert prods Blake’s prized integrity, hinting that only deadbeats are exempt from capitalist realism. The camera, not quite static, but poised and attentive, records these lacerating exchanges at the head of the dining table. What results is an awkward perspective that positions us as uncomfortable dinner guests, forced to bear witness to petty bickering that will soon spiral out of control.

In one of these verbal showdown, Blake harangues Albert on the virtues of documentary, the truth-seeking medium, over fiction, a genre ‘indifferent to the beauty of the Real.’ But anyone that has struggled through film school, especially Lesage, understands that the division between cinematic modes is a myth: documentary never escapes the clutches of narrative, just as fiction invariably indexes the objective world. So as the narrative evolves, Who By Fire subtly riffs on this dichotomy. Blake—the noble champion of verite—is exposed as a serial manipulator who gaslights Albert over his stolen wine, sexualizes Aliocha while she’s drunk, and violently threatens Jeff on a cliff. His deceptive and cruel acts seem at odds with his quest for honesty. But is Blake really a janus-faced hypocrite? Or might he be of a consistent Nietzschean position: the only truth is what man’s wills it to be.

At the sidelines of this middle-aged feud is a coming of age drama—Lesage’s specialty after Demons and Genesis. Jeff is hot for Aliocha, but, like so many adolescent yearners, he can’t articulate his desires. Nor does he try (he quite literally speaks in ellipses). This pent-up heat leads Jeff into the ugly vicissitudes of teenagerdoom. At times, he transforms into a predator, furtively stalking Aliocha through the cabin and masturbating to her nude polaroid. Other moments, however, reveal him to be quite pathetic. In one especially cringe-worthy scene, Jeff attempts to seduce Aloicha through kinky domination. But his gentle character and sexual inexperience ultimately betrays his strained S&M parody. In the end, all the boy can muster up is a soft slap. Such is the frustration of puberty; for better or for worse, Jeff remains locked out of this brand of manhood.

In spite of his perpetual brooding—or maybe because of it—Jeff is by far the most interesting figure in Who By Fire. Credit is due to Parker’s exceptional pouty performance, but our connection is also by process of elimination; he’s the only character granted an inner life, no matter how unflattering. The film has a sprawling cast and yet, even with a 155-minute run time, the supporting characters feel underdeveloped, bereft of interiority. This is especially the case with Aliocha, who is patently reduced to her relationship with men: as the enigmatic object of desire for Jeff and Blake, or as the needy subject behind Albert’s artistic compromise. It is somewhat comical, then, that she’s named after Alyosha from the holy grail of literature, The Brothers Karamazov, an epic known for its grandiloquent metaphysical segues and careful character renderings. Surely, a film that dares to draw on Doestoevsky’s good name would possess the narrative credentials to do so—that, or Lesage is puncturing Albert’s pretensions in holding his daughter to such a high literary standard.

The film’s other grand reference is found in the english title Who By Fire—a direct gesture to Leonard Cohen’s eponymous track, which is also an allusion to the Hebrew prayer “U’Netaneh Tokef Kedushat Hayom” (“Let Us Tell How Utterly Holy This Day Is”). For the song’s entirety, Cohen melancholically ponders the inescapability of death: “And who by fire? Who by water?” Fittingly, Who By Fire is also steeped in dread from beginning to end, and pressurized by death’s omnipresence. The image of an idol, old and youthful friendships, artistic aspirations, optimism, first love, and the ego, are among the casualties displayed onscreen. As the film draws to an end, we are left wondering whether a ‘coming of age’ signifies the start of adult life or a funeral for innocence.