The wounded male ego spins out of control over a too long weekend in Philippe Lesage’s Who By Fire, a claustrophobic and searing portrait of middle-aged male anomie brushing against the generation who will revere, replace, or forget them.
Bitter and long held rivalries bubble over when Arthur Gary (Paul Ahmarani) visits his former creative partner Blake Cadieux (Arieh Worthalter) on his island cabin in the Quebec wilderness. Arthur brings along his two children, the University aged Aliocha (named after a male character in The Brothers Karamazov), his teen son Max (Antoine Marchand Gagnon), and Max’s best friend Jeff (Noah Parker) who hopes to be a director like the Oscar winning Blake.
For twenty years Arthur and Blake worked together. Arthur wrote the scripts for Blake’s award-winning features. Blake decided for reasons never specified to break up the partnership and segue (unremarkably) into documentary filmmaking. Jeff, who calls himself a fan of Blake’s work didn’t know the documentaries existed. Two words mark out the three main males of the film – competition and compensating.
Jeff has developed an ‘interest’ in Aliocha (Aurelia Arandi-Longpré). A teenage crush so incredibly toxic it’s appalling. Ali has at no stage led Jeff to believe she is going to reciprocate his feelings. He makes a clumsy and inept attempt to kiss her. Ali’s rebuttal of his advances is met with him slapping her face and then on an all-night sulk in the woods getting lost and becoming a figure of empathy for Blake. Blake who has long ignored his own son.
It’s difficult to work out who is the most self-involved character. Blake who has created an Übermensch retreat in the woods to compensate for his failing career. Who has expensive toys like a sea plane and young film specialist, Millie (Sophie Desmarais) working for him creating his own onsite boutique studio. Blake, who pretentiously lectures on concepts he only seems to half understand then pointedly mocks Arthur’s own career downturn which is writing for kid’s cartoons to pay the bills. “Television is the opiate of the masses” Blake essentially spits with utter scorn to a ‘friend’ creating harmless entertainment for children unlikely to be seeking out Godard over their breakfast cereal.
Or is it Arthur who blames Blake for never giving him credit? Who simply will not shut up about his emotional state and imagines that he’s more interesting than the very patient and extremely polite Hélène, (Irene Jacob) a legendary French actress who was iconic in the 1990s. He has panic attacks over a bottle of wine not being correct requiring everyone at the table to stop eating.
Arthur, the family man, who requires his daughter’s gratitude for the sacrifice of his intellectual reputation and film screenwriting career (she was a toddler when the Gary/ Cadieux partnership ended – he had time to find another creative partner), but also claims her as his success.
Or finally, Jeff, who has only the excuse that he is young – and as such aches to be taken seriously by Ali and Blake. His mixture of self-doubt and entitlement is a hormone aided powder keg turning what he perceives as deliberate humiliation into potential violence.
Jeff is a dull and petulant teen. When Ali spends time with him explaining the book she is writing, “Spring” he is out of his depth. Later, in anger, he slaps a book out of her hand as he walks past her (extremely effective in revealing his personality).
“To kill an animal, you have to revert to the animal state,” Blake says. Proud of his skills as a hunter gatherer. It must be noted he does have a chef – Ferran (Guillaume Laurin) who enables his comfortably gourmand ‘primal man’ lifestyle and behaviour. He also has an unobtrusive gamekeeper of sorts Barney (Carlo Harriet) who quietly does the hard work. Blake Cadieux is a hollow and posturing creature desperately afraid of being seen as inadequate. Jeff’s disillusionment with Blake and their rivalry comes from a mutually conscious recognition that they’re the same person but at different ages.
Lesage’s sympathies are firmly set with Ali. Ali shoulders the burden of male egos as best she can while still maintaining a sense of self. Blake tries to claim her as his own which leads Jeff into more deluded behaviour. Blake’s insistence on humiliating Arthur with pranks and attacks on his ‘softness’ and alcoholism cause Ali defend her father’s neuroses. Her brother, Max, is jealous because Jeff clearly wants to be in her company not his and says she’s always parading herself. She is compelled to apologise to Jeff stating she never meant to hurt him. The reality is she never meant to do anything to him.
In a crucial and painful scene, it is Ali who physically attempts to undo the irreparable damage done by the men and screams in frustration. Lesage gives Ali her brighter ending as the weekend is over and they drive away – she reads a poem symbolising she will never bend her neck, hide her talent, or apologise for her intelligence and womanhood again.
Who By Fire is beautifully shot by Balthazar Lab and well-acted (Aurelia Arandi-Longpré is a revelation) but doesn’t quite justify its excessive run time. The kayaking trip which culminates all the fraught dynamics in the film is painfully slow. The vignettes which preceded the hike and rafting trip varied in length and impact. A long and brutal argument at dinner where a horrendously drunk Arthur goes on the attack is worth every second. Yet is every meal scene necessary to work out how the increasingly uncomfortable cabin guests are coping? How long does the mostly silent car ride with the Garys and Jeff to the island need to go on for the audience to understand dynamics which will again be repeated once there?
Lesage’s purpose for pacing the film is essentially immersing the audience as unwilling participants who will want to leave the island. The most beautiful environment inhabited by three men in particular who turn it into their domain of disgrace. However, the multiple breakdowns and breaking points of Jeff and Albert begin to drag, and Blake’s narcissism need not be established in almost every scene.
Lesage’s ‘protagonist’ in the ensemble is Ali, arguably his point of view characters are Millie and Hélène. Hélène and her husband Eddy (Laurent Lucas) came from Paris for a holiday in the wilderness. Hélène has no agenda, nor Millie particularly as she is planning to leave the job. The audience watches Millie and Hélène do their best to soothe egos as neutral parties trapped in the shrinking space of the log cabin. Millie brings the only moment of unalloyed joy to the whole weekend.
Who by Fire is an act of suffocation and perhaps catharsis that comes at a great cost for those thrust into the orbit of men unwilling to wear their own responsibilities and limitations. The film’s titleevokes the great Canadian poet and musician Leonard Cohen’s lament of the many ways die or cease to exist even while alive – by water, accident, love, slow decay, drugs, egotism.
Lesage’s film turns disillusionment and disappointment into an emotional blood sport. It turns galvanising for the characters who know they must never allow themselves to become what they have witnessed. Jeff has seen his mirror. Ali has finally screamed enough. Who by Fire is not so much a coming-of-age narrative as it is a narrative of two generations who exist in an unhealthy symbiosis.
A powerful commentary on the brittle psyches of men who believed they deserved one kind of life, lived it for a while, and watched their own ‘slow decay’. Who by Fire is high ordeal and common trial – Philippe Lesage’s genius for understanding masculine self-delusion is brilliantly astute.
Who By Fire (Comme le feu) is screening at the Melbourne International Film Festival on the 25th of August, and available for streaming via ACMI. Details HERE
Director/writer: Philippe Lesage
Starring: Noah Parker, Aurelia Arandi-Longpré, Antoine Marchand Gagnon, Arieh Worthalter, Paul Ahmarani, and Irène Jacob.
