Writer-director Christian Petzold likes to keep viewers off-balance; he set his 2018 drama Transit in what seemed to be Nazi-era Germany but was in fact the present day. So if his latest film, Afire, begins for all the world like a buddy movie, you know that’s not where it will end up. And while Afire is on many levels a comedy, it goes deeper, richly uncomfortable without quite descending into cringe, its actors brilliantly navigating a game in which the rules are not at all certain.
It’s best not to give away too much, so let’s take a central scene of seemingly little import. Somewhere on the beach, Leon (Thomas Schubert), on foot, encounters Nadja (Petzold regular Paula Beer), who’s cycling back to the remote cabin where they’re staying by the Baltic Sea. Nadja pedals away, and then we hear an off-screen gasp; she’s fallen off her bike, spilling provisions, including a container of goulash, all over the dunes. Now, a normal guy would ask Nadja if she’s alright, but Leon’s tenuous relationship with the woman has been fraught, both from resentment and attraction.
For much of the film until this point, Leon has all but said, “I hate her,” yet you know that’s not really now he feels. For her part, Nadja has tried to get Leon to relax, but he has dismissed invitations to go for a swim with a curt, “My work won’t allow it,” which even he realizes later is ridiculous. As much as he’s pushed her away, when Leon finally tries to help her and gets goulash on his face, she playfully wipes it off his nose.
Much of the entertainment in watching Afire is in watching these relationships unfold. Petzold withholds information about his characters, so we learn things as Leon is learning them. Though Schubert (an American producer would cast Jonah Hill for the remake) doesn’t go so far as to make Leon likable, he makes him watchable: you keep your eye on his developing expressions much as he’s keeping an eye on a woman whom he sees as both intruder and love object. As unlikable as Leon is, you kind of identify with him as he tries to suss out what’s going on around him.
What goes on around him can be heavy-handed. When Leon and his buddy Felix (Langston Uibel) arrive at the vacation cabin where they meet Nadja, their car misfires, but Leon can’t hear it, and, like the viewer, is startled when the engine explodes. That’s one of several things aflame in the film, including the forest fires that slowly rage not far from the cabin, and that detail resonates for anyone affected by the smoke alerts through much of the United States this summer. You know what these people are dealing with, and if one is frustrated with Leon’s self-absorption, one also sympathizes that he’s found himself in an awfully complicated situation.
Despite the heavy signposts, the film’s anxiety unfolds at a dryly casual pace. It’s not exactly a light touch, but it can be hilarious just watching reaction shots. What’s brilliant here is that much of the acting, the heavy lifting, occurs around the dialogue, not in it – characters frequently exchange glances that run a silent commentary on the spoken action, these quiet gestures fueling relationships and their development far more than anything they say. Conversations at meal time become pregnant with meaning; when Nadja and Leon look at each other while Felix and Devid (Enno Trebs) have a conversation about a piece of farm equipment that you know will turn out to be Chekhov’s tractor, there’s a whole alternate narrative left unsaid.
That’s much of the fun of Afire; Petzold establishes his characters elliptically but efficiently, so when you finally get to know Leon and Nadja, you don’t need them to tell you what they’re thinking, except perhaps for a slightly more enigmatic final scene. The film walks a fine line around delicate tonal shifts, and it all pays off, with wit and something like romance.
Photo courtesy of Sideshow / Janus Films
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