Following UNDINE (2020), German cinema luminary Christian Petzold's tenth feature film AFIRE tackles another elemental force point-blank. Exclusively confined in a holiday home on the Baltic sea, with a raging forest fire ablaze in the vicinity, four twenty-something young people, Leon (Schubert), a writer, his friend Felix (Uibel), an art school student, Nadja (Beer, whose emotion is levelheadedly kept in check), Leon's new crush and Devid (Trebs), Felix's new boyfriend, do not seem to heed the impending danger, until their leisurely time is grossly interrupted by the engulfing blaze.

Among the quartet, Leon is the protagonist, all he wants is to spend the time rendering a final touch to his second novel, named "Club Sandwich"and is constantly vexed by any sort of distraction, he is also quietly overwrought toward the prospective visit from his editor Helmut (Brandt). Played by Schubert with a simmering pique, Leon is a wet blanket in the group, and too self-absorbed to apprehend what is going on around him. He is dismissive of Felix's photograph projects, slow on the uptake that Felix and Devid have become an item, not to mention he fails to suss that Helmut is gravely ill.

Leon is attracted to Nadja, but also depreciates her ice-cream vendor side hustle. He nerves himself up to bestow a first-reading of his novel on her, and is resultantly affronted by her negative feedback on it, "who cares for a critique from an ice-cream vendor?", but the truth is, Nadja is so much more than that. The revelation only further disconcert him and sends up his navel-gazing discomfiture.

The fact is, Leon never truly tries to know Nadja except for the coup de foudre, he secretively and pettily resents Devid for having a roll in the hay with her, then bluntly plays the "hard to get" card when Nadja shows some initiative, much to his chagrin and to no avail. The problem lies in that it is hard to get on board with Petzold's wavelength to feel sympathetic of Leon's double-bind, whose character is too close for comfort because there is a plethora of people like him around us, it becomes a cliché, and not a pleasant one.

It is one thing that audience begins to empathize with Leon's plight on account of Petzold's diligence in his direction and his unyielding focus on him, but to root for Leon is another thing. It is a pertinent dilemma that a director chooses to tell the story of the most inert, most unstimulating character among a close-knit group, just because he can relate to him the most. A testimony that why fiction cinema is hurt for filmmakers from all kinds of diverse groups to tell their own stories, for instance, Devid's sexual fluidity, Nadja's mystique and Felix's sensitivity, are, for Yours Truly's money, all far more appealing than Leon's inceldom and tunnel vision.

Eventually, Petzold's long-waited coup de maître attempting to induce a cosmic catharsis out of the preternatural force, aka. the rampaging fire and its casualty, doesn't have the same lingering impact like his previous works. Fire, unlike the stillness of water, proves to be a pricklier, more volatile subject for Petzold to operate with, and AFIRE is also weighed down by the ending's noncommittal insouciance. Still, it has the best teutonic joke "spray me gay!", which advisedly suggests that dry humor should be mined for Petzold's next project.

referential entries: Petzold's UNDINE (2020, 7.2/10); Lars von Trier's MELANCHOLIA (2011, 7.8/10).

English Title: Afire

Original Title: Roter Himmel

Year: 2023

Genre: Drama, Comedy, Romance

Country: Germany

Language: German

Director/Screenwriter: Christian Petzold

Cinematography: Hans Fromm

Editor: Bettina Böhler

Cast:

Thomas Schubert

Paula Beer

Langston Uibel

Enno Trebs

Matthias Brandt

Rating: 6.8/10