Who By Fire (Comme le feu)

 

Director Philippe Lesage

WHO BY FIRE (Comme le feu)        B                                                                              Canada  France  (161 mi)  2024  ‘Scope  d: Philippe Lesage

Allegedly inspired by the Leonard Cohen song by the same name, Leonard Cohen - Who By Fire (Official Live in London 2008) YouTube (6:26), with its links to the Jewish Yom Kippur prayer Unetanneh Tokef and its references to death, but it is also a song about our life journey and how our experiences, good and bad, welcome and unwelcome, shape the person we become.  With many believing he is the heir apparent to Québécois filmmaker Denys Arcand, Lesage is a Canadian director, screenwriter, producer, photographer, and actor who got his start directing documentary films before transitioning to autobiographical-inspired fictional films, winner of the Generation 14plus Grand Prix at Berlinale 2024, which explores youth perspectives, often with challenging, authentic, and unconventional storytelling, carving out the psychological contours of teenagers finding their paths through treacherous emotional landscapes.  While there are many good things about this film, it’s still a bit confusing and off-putting, as some of the characters exist, but are nearly invisible, fading into the woodworks, which matches the darkened palette with an almost Rembrandt looking framing, where things easily disappear into the darkness.  Also the backstory, whatever it may be, is entirely absent, so whatever history these characters have remains a mystery.  For instance, there is the presence of legendary French actress Irène Jacob, a fixture in Kieślowski’s THE DOUBLE LIFE OF VÉRONIQUE (1991) and THREE COLORS TRILOGY: RED (1994), yet she is barely utilized, appearing only briefly in a role with little consequence.  Instead the focus is on the fragility of the male ego, mostly explored through long, tense shots set against the unforgiving Canadian wilderness, highlighting how nature reflects and dismantles the characters’ fragile mindset, whether it be an adult or child perspective.  Exploring complex, messy relationships and shifting power dynamics during a secluded wilderness retreat, the film centers on teenage filmmaker wannabe Jeff (Noah Parker), who is clearly trying to find himself, searching for approval from adult role models, but instead encounters a disoriented and unhinged world of adult insecurities, artistic ego, and failed mentorship while visiting an acclaimed director he greatly admires.  With a predominance of atmosphere and mood setting the stage, there’s an interesting use of interior dream sequences, where it’s not always recognizable just whose dream we are seeing.  17-year-old Jeff accompanies the family of his best friend, Max (Antoine Marchand Gagnon), his intellectually neurotic screenwriting father Albert (Paul Ahmarani), and Max’s self-asserting, college-aged older sister, Aliocha (Aurélia Arandi-Longpré in her first feature role), an aspiring writer he has a secret crush on, named after the saintly youngest brother from Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, heading to the secluded home of well-known filmmaker and avid outdoorsman Blake Cadieux (Arieh Worthalter) in what is meant to be a happy reunion between two longtime friends and collaborators, but instead of a welcoming occasion, things spin out of control in suffocating fashion, as it dissolves into tension-filled confrontations of vanity and masculinity, where you see the grownups through the eyes and the sensitivity of the young protagonists who are struggling to figure out who they are in the face of outrageous misbehavior on the part of their “role models.”  

Opening in a car traveling down the highway sequence that resembles the opening of Christian Petzold’s Afire (Roter Himmel) (2023), or the opening of Gus van Sant’s GERRY, Gerry [2002] Gus Van Sant YouTube (4:27), where it’s even the same car, an old Mercedes, set to the ambient electronic track of The House in the Woods’ Grounded YouTube (9:38), a darkly moody and haunting piece fraught with sensual tension that offers a sense of dread, while also having a hypnotically calming influence, as if breaking the monotony of the journey with the anticipation of an ominous danger that awaits them, capturing a lingering shot of a boy and girl’s hands in the car coming close together without touching, an homage to the opening of the Bresson film A Man Escaped (Un Condamné à Mort s'est échappé) (1956), and a reflection of a growing sense of longing, setting the tone for the film’s meticulous exploration of the changing dynamic of relationships.  Bush pilot Blake is there waiting for them in his hydroplane, flying them to one of those northern Canadian lakes that would be impossible to reach otherwise, as there are no roads, yet he plays a prank right from the outset, a practical joke with cruel undertones, Exclusive Clip: Who by Fire - Philippe Lesage (2025) YouTube (1:32), a foreshadowing of what’s to come.  As they arrive to this woodland retreat, which is used mostly as a hunting and fishing lodge, what’s immediately apparent is the force of the great outdoors, as they are literally engulfed in nature, where it’s easy to get lost in the woods, yet there’s also a claustrophobic feel of being trapped.  Almost immediately, Jeff’s attention focuses on Aliocha, with Max fading into the background, so much so that he’s almost written out of the story entirely, becoming an invisible presence, yet he’s always there, just no longer noticed by Jeff who is fixated on his sister.  At an opportune moment, he tries to kiss her, but is flatly rejected, running away in shame afterwards, thoroughly humiliated, spending a harrowing night alone in the woods, completely enveloped in the darkness, taking shelter in another abandoned hunting cabin, eventually rescued the next morning by the searching plane of Blake flying overhead, who also picks up two new guests visiting from Paris, Hélène (Irène Jacob) and her partner, Eddy (Laurent Lucas), representing the educated and elitist elements of society, yet beneath the surface lies a profound dysfunction, reflections of the broader malaise within bourgeois society.  Their arrival culminates with another festive dinner, Who by Fire | Clip | Opens March 14 YouTube (1:48), but it takes an ugly turn, with alpha male Blake tormenting the more melodramatic Albert again, this time switching Albert’s prized vintage wine to a cheaper version, which he immediately recognizes, though it’s been poured into the same bottle, leaving him stunned and flabbergasted before sending him into an emotional tailspin, mirroring Jeff’s outburst, building on a similar dynamic that copies the correlation between Jeff and Aliocha with Albert and Blake.  Relationships are viewed with themes of exposed vulnerability and acts of deception, erupting in a feverish after dinner sequence of comical and wildly exaggerated dancing to The B-52's - Rock Lobster (Official Music Video) YouTube (7:06), a joyous, anxiety-relieving counterpart to the cruel embarrassment of the earlier sequence, yet happiness feels more like a mirage than any positive development.

Jeff is in for another radical surprise, as he discovers evidence of Blake and Aliocha’s secret affair in the form of witnessing Blake taking naked photographs of Aliocha as he peers from the outside into the cabin window, which immediately changes his perception of both of them.  No longer envious, they each become the object of his scorn, calling her a slut who will put out for anyone else but him, even revealing to Albert that he watched Blake drink his prized wine afterwards while joking about the incident, having a good laugh at his expense.  It’s a stunning turn of events, as hero-worshipping turns to hatred and scorn, even having thoughts of killing Blake, which plays out like a sick revenge fantasy in his head, evolving into a study of male patriarchy gone wrong.  The coup de grâce, however, is an extended ten-minute dinner scene that grows more uncomfortable by the second, with the table serving as a verbal battleground for voicing grievances, laced with mean-spirited insults and humiliation, as Albert expresses unfiltered venom for his old friend, voicing his displeasure about the wine incident, but taking things much further, as old resentments and petty jealousies erupt.  With an unsettling tone, combustible tensions soon boil over between the two creative male egos, initially reminiscing over their youthful endeavors, but the mood shifts significantly, as playful bickering leads to brazen insults and hurtful comments, going way over the top in terms of drunken outbursts, taking a slide into the wretchedly vile and repugnant, adding an obnoxious stench into the air. The following morning, hoping a little fresh mountain air might ease the pent-up tension from the night before, they set out in canoes down the river, peaceful at first before the scenes of the group canoeing down the rapids in the middle of the deep woods resembles the ominous danger that awaits them in John Boorman’s DELIVERANCE (1972), as it explodes into a catastrophe on multiple fronts, with several boats capsizing, leading to a horrible tragedy, while a hunt into the mountains shows Jeff eyeing Blake through the scoped sights of his rifle, like an internalized death fantasy, where clearly they have crossed a line of no return.  There’s a switch that takes place, as the more the film goes on, the more we’re getting inside Aliocha’s head.  No one comes out unscathed in what is essentially a coming-of-age story where innocence veers into the horror-in-the-woods genre, shot in ‘Scope by Balthazar Lab, growing significantly darker and more disturbing, taking its own sweet time at more than two and a half hours, where a good deal of it is staring at a near completely dark screen, with very little outline of anything visible, a visual tactic that definitely tries one’s patience and can get wearying, while the director also has a tendency to interrupt music scenes abruptly, ultimately feeling underwhelming, with not nearly enough dramatic tension, though it is told in a uniquely distinct style.  Set in a time before anyone had cell phones or social media accounts, the film is essentially a series of extended conversations that steadily build into heated arguments, reflecting the disillusionment of youth, the failure of adult role models, the effects of toxic masculinity, and the longing for artistic/personal intimacy, as Lesage blends a combination of slowly building naturalism and dread in this lengthy exposé of a wilderness retreat that goes off the rails, spiraling into the depths of the unknown, like an existential venture into the heart of darkness. 

While this train wreck of a film has a darker, more psychologically complex edge, featuring really insufferable characters for a prolonged period of time, presenting episodes of aggression and simmering tensions without offering even the slightest satisfaction of closure, it just doesn’t have the character depth or emotional complexity of some of the best movies made about adolescence, like François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows (Les quatre cents coups) (1959), Edward Yang’s A Brighter Summer Day (Gu ling jie shao nian sha ren shi jian) (1991), Olivier Assayas’s  Cold Water (L’eau Froide) (1994), André Téchiné’s Wild Reeds (Les Roseaux Sauvages) (1994), Richard Kelly’s DONNIE DARKO (2001), Terry Zwigoff’s Ghost World (2001), Andrea Arnold’s FISH TANK (2009), Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012), James Ponsoldt’s The Spectacular Now (2013), or Richard Linklater’s 2014 Top Ten List #1 Boyhood, to name a few. 

Tokyo Sonata

 

Director Kiyoshi Kurosawa

Kurosawa with Teruyuki Kagawa

Kurosawa with Kōji Yakusho

The director on the set with Kyôko Koizumi and Kōji Yakusho

TÔKYÔ SONATA                   A                                                                                                 Japan  Netherlands  Hong Kong  (119 mi)  2008  d: Kiyoshi Kurosawa 

This film will portray a very ordinary family in modern Japan.  I start from a point where lies, suspicion and a complete breakdown of communication already have established themselves within the family.  Without a doubt, this is ‘modern’ and this is also ‘Japan.’  However, I would like to show a glimmer of hope in the end.  Can I do that?  Even if I could do so, would that be something that saves a conventional family?  I just do not know now.  Since I do not know, I have a strong desire to make this film.                                                                                            —Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Director’s Statement)

This may be Kurosawa’s most original film, and arguably his finest, not like anything else viewed in the last twenty years, as it starts out as a rhythm of life film, showing the Ozu-like daily routine of a typical Japanese middle class family, with countless shots of passing commuter trains, causing flashing light to stream through the windows, where roles are organized like a mini-society, as each establishes their own territory, but somewhere the film goes off the rails, providing a ruthless look at a disintegrating family where there’s no stability holding them together, as the equilibrium has been broken by unexpected circumstances, each lost in a free float of what feels like a fever dream.  Somehow, someway, they manage through difficult times and find their way back, irrevocably changed by the intruding existential trauma, where in the end this is a superbly executed search for meaning film.  If you simply read the nothing special synopsis, you might wonder what all the fuss is about, with Kurosawa and co-writer Sachiko Tanaka adapting a screenplay written twenty years earlier by Australian Max Mannix, who had lived in Tokyo, but this is beautifully realized direction, where most of the film is composed of shots defined by architecture and geometric framing.  The intelligence of this film, the exquisite look, the fluid pace, the changes in tone and character, the playful use of genre expectations, the superb performances overall and the remarkable inventiveness and originality simply make it stand out above all others, so beautifully framed, shot after shot.  In the opening scene, like The Tempest, a storm rages outside, bringing havoc to this perfectly manicured indoor apartment, where the mother initially closes the door to keep the turbulent forces out, but then, strangely, opens the door again, which is a key moment in the film, as she's allowing the darkness to protrude inside the perfect order of their universe.  Slowly, darkness prevails for each of the characters, until they realize the power that lies within, ending with a perfect grace note, Tôkyô sonata - Kiyoshi Kurosawa (2008) - ending. YouTube (7:13).  As a point of reference, Kurosawa acknowledged in interviews that he was inspired by the family drama threatened by outside forces in David Cronenberg’s A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE (2005).  Winner of the Jury Prize (2nd place) in Un Certain Regard at the Cannes Film Festival, it was also awarded the Silver Hugo as the 2nd Best Film (to HUNGER) at the 2008 Chicago Film Fest.   

Kurosawa is seen by many as a cult director due to his early works which helped define New Japanese cinema, showing an underground and energetic Japanese youth that are alienated from a modern society defined by a tilt towards consumerism, reflected in gimmicks and gadgetry, and old generation parents that don’t understand they can’t buy their way out of their children’s problems or comprehend why this new generation feels so vaguely uncertain about their future, deeply confused about coming to terms with a modern Japanese identity, especially after this younger generation supposedly had it so good.   Never one to show his hand, Kurosawa explores an ambiguous world of the supernatural in a film like CURE (1997), or utilizes ghosts in a full throttle horror film like PULSE (2001).  His films have a trademark sense of dread or elusiveness that’s hard to define, reflecting a world that slowly seems to be falling apart, adding to a certain mystique that surrounds his reputation.  One thing that impresses the most about this film is the filmmaker’s ability to continually redefine himself through his body of work, as this is unlike any of his other films, feeling more mature, more refined, perhaps aware that he’s being seen on a larger stage, so he sets his sights on a prevalent social phenomenon, the emasculation of the family patriarch through the loss and shame of unemployment, accompanied by an unraveling of the postwar maternal role, creating a rupture in the traditional family unit.  One scene perfectly encapsulates the mother’s growing sense of uselessness and invisibility, as she asks at one point, “Will someone please pull me up?” with her outstretched hands lingering in mid-air, waiting to be picked up from the sofa, but there’s no one there, as she’s met instead by an indifferent silence.  Above all, this remains an intelligent and principled work that continues to probe the many unseen layers of Japanese society, unmasking the invisible, examining people of all ages who exist but are rarely seen as they blend so perfectly into the homogenous whole.  TOKYO SONATA is a rare dark comedy that revels in its simplicity, but then tragically veers off course when things don’t go the way it seems into an undefined no man’s land of unrealized expectations, where characters find themselves fighting a losing battle against the chaos and violence that envelops them.

Kurosawa examines a modern Japanese family who are bright and educated, where they happily greet one another when they come home, eat together at the same table, and that for all practical purposes is a success story.  The director then slowly deconstructs this impression one member at a time, as if invaded by an invisible dark force that plagues each individual, making them behave out of context with how they understand their own lives, a reflection of the mass uncertainty sweeping the country, where a decade of economic stagnation in Japan led to a global financial crisis that has uprooted the lives of not just thousands but millions of workers around the world (did we ever recover?), creating an undercurrent of dread, shown through a series of increasingly audacious tonal shifts.  It’s a quiet film filled with absurdist humor offering subtle clues, continually challenging the audience’s perceptions of what they see, bringing a scene to the brink of closure, and then letting it remain incomplete, filming in fragments, like incomplete sentences, rather than completing the scene to the end.  In this way, the audience has to fill in the blanks and make up their own minds about what’s happening with each character.  By the end, altered by forces seen and unseen, where so much happens offscreen and so much is left unspoken, all are significantly different, yet appear just the same.  From start to finish, this is a modern day ghost story, as each character initially is seen within the context of order and authority, all based on the economic security of the father who goes off to work each day and supports his family.  In postwar Japanese society, you trained for a job, joined a company, and generally stayed there for life, becoming the economic model for providing your family financial security, but when an unforeseeable rift in the family structure occurs due to the father losing his job, everyone’s life must reconfigure itself, as each is offered a new beginning, turning into a shadow play where each must find themselves within the prevailing disorder.  Each character temporarily loses themselves to misfortune and the chaos of impermanence, where until a certain scene repeats itself from a different character’s perspective, there is plenty of prevailing humor.  Everything after that moment, however, feels like life or death consequences, where we see what a tenuous hold we have on our own sanity, where we can see how easily it can all slip away.        

The father, the multi-faceted Teruyuki Kagawa whose face reads whatever you want to see in it, is a corporate administrator who loses his job in the opening moments of the film.  With a nod to Laurent Cantet’s TIME OUT (2001), which the director claims he had not seen, rather than tell his wife and family who are so used to him going to work each day, he continues his little charade of pretending to go to work, because in Japan, the only way to exist is to appear like everyone else, where it’s all about maintaining appearances, conforming to the point of absurdity, especially when he meets another colleague who is doing the exact same thing, hanging out in food lines, the unemployment office, spending all day at the library, or most impressively, setting his cellphone to ring 5 times an hour so he can feign important business calls.  The friend is priceless, even asking the father over to his home where he can berate his lazy work ethic in front of his wife in order to maintain his stature as the voice of authority in his home.  The father is eventually challenged by his own family in much the same way.  The eldest son (Yû Koyanagi) is hardly ever at home, consumed by his studying and school activities, so when he announces he wants to join the American army, his father grows furious.  His son reasons that the American army protects Japan, so he will actually be doing his part to protect Japan, but when he’s sent to the Middle East war, he quickly discovers that the war is not his own, and for his family, those news reports about the war abroad that they never paid any attention to become substantially more traumatizing.  The youngest son, Kai Inowaki in a note perfect performance, is bright, perhaps too bright, as he inadvertently organizes a rebellion against his teacher’s morality after he is erroneously accused of bringing manga porn to class.  Against his father’s wishes, he decides to pursue piano lessons, one presumes because he has a crush on the attractive young teacher, Haruka Igawa, but he turns out to be a brilliant young student whose talent is so exceptional his father refuses to believe him.  Once more, his authoritative voice is challenged at home.  Easily the most far reaching and surreal segment is the strange happenings with the mother, former pop idol Kyôko Koizumi, who is nothing less than phenomenal in this film as the quiet voice of reason and civility in her proper household as the perfect mother, perhaps overprotective, usually taking her children’s side against their father, whose authority and sense of order is completely undermined by the end, or so it seems. 

What might seem surprising is the impression of how easily conformism and the entrenched social fabric all falls apart and how little it takes for that to happen, such as losing one’s job and the domino effect this has on the entire family.  Again, much of this feels suggested, where appearance is not necessarily reality, as if to play with our preconceptions, where perhaps not much has really changed at all.  The character development is well defined as we come to appreciate each character, yet it also remains ambiguous by the very nature of so much remaining unknown and incomplete.  This film has far reaching consequences that likely affects all of us, yet many will leave the theater without realizing any of that.  Just because the director places clues doesn’t mean people will find them or even begin to understand. Certainly one of the most appealing aspects is the artfully constructed quiet humanism balanced against the luminous look of the film, where much of the indoor scenes are shot in a golden hue and where so many shots feel perfectly framed by Akiko Ashizawa, not the least of which is the final shot.  This film requires interaction with the audience, where despite the meticulous detail in every scene, we’re left with so many unanswered questions, with a special appearance from Kurosawa regular Kōji Yakusho.  Sadness pervades over the quirky humor, where the absurd reality is hilariously funny, such as the dinner sequence with the friend, but then the actual reality that follows is anything but.  Kurosawa slowly changes the prevailing mood until we’re face to face with humiliation and discomfort, where the darkest scenarios affect each character, mysteriously switching from being the father’s story to being his wife’s, where each could easily lose their life in a meaningless instant, like the scene with the husband and wife at the mall that replays itself, where each has no comprehension whatsoever of what’s happening to the other, but all somehow manage to survive, perhaps simply because they have each other.  This is a sublime and loving film that toys with our failures and inadequacies, even the otherwise perfect piano teacher is getting a painful divorce, where we learn that from the most painful circumstances, there is a mysterious light that shines, as it does for the wife at the ocean, even though when she goes back it’s gone, creating a night of unending tension, but afterwards she is bathed by the morning sunlight, like a rebirth, which apparently is all that is needed, as she eventually finds her way back home, where the moving, perfectly drawn finale pulsates with an emotional catharsis.