Afire: Christian Petzold’s smouldering wet, hot German summer
By Liam Lacey
Rating: A
The German filmmaker, Christian Petzold, has created some of the most intriguing European films of post-Wall era. Films such as Jerichow, Barbara, Phoenix and Transit, echo film-noir, melodrama, Hitchcockian thrillers and even, in his last film, Undine, fairy tales.
But they all come with unexpected narrative and tonal shifts that render the familiar freshly strange.
His latest, Afire, is his take on the ever-popular summer coming-of-age movie. Accessible and witty with an easy naturalism, Afire is unburdened by the political and historical context of his earlier films, set in an environment of young people eating outdoor meals, shifting romantic arrangements and lots of table talk. (Petzold cites his COVID lockdown immersion in the films of Éric Rohmer as an influence.)
Insufferable writer Leon (Thomas Schubert) is suffered graciously by Nadja (Paula Beer) in Afire.
On an obvious level, it’s a character study of the artist as an insufferable young prig, a type that, as Petzold no doubt knows, is familiar to the point of cliché. But as the film unfolds, and boldly shifts tone, the character suggests the larger theme of struggling to stay humane in a broken world.
We first meet Leon (Thomas Schubert), riding in the passenger seat of a car driving through the forest on the way to a cottage near the Baltic Sea. He’s a heavy-set young man with unkempt hair and what might be called a resting sneer face. He and his friend, Felix (Langston Uibel) are driving to a cottage in the forest near the Baltic Sea. Leon is looking to polish the manuscript for his sophomore novel while Felix is preparing a photography portfolio for art school.
The car breaks down, several miles away from the destination, but there’s no cell reception because wildfires to the south have knocked out the service. Felix heads off alone for help, leaving Leon in the darkening woods, the first ominous sign that things are not going to go smoothly.
When the two men eventually arrive at the cottage, they discover it is already inhabited: Felix’s mother, who owns the house, has already offered the cottage to a work friend’s niece, a young woman, Nadja (Paula Beer). Leon and Felix don’t actually meet Nadja for a couple of days. Instead, they hear her, having loud, vigorous sex in the adjacent bedroom. The second night, when she’s at it again, the agitated disturbed Leon, after covering himself with bug spray, attempts to sleep on a hammock in the gazebo. He wakes early to see Nadia’s athletic naked lover, clothes in hand, slip out of the house and into the forest.
When Leon finally meets Nadja, who works as an ice-cream vendor at the beach, she is warm, welcoming and magnetically attractive. Though Leon is immediately fixated on her, he remains awkward and condescending to her in conversation. When Felix and Nadja invite him to come swimming, he insists he is busy: (“My work comes first.”), though it seems more likely he’s embarrassed about his body. When Leon makes his way to the seashore, manuscript in hand, he’s keeps his jeans and jacket on.
At the beach, he recognizes Nadja’s lover as a local lifeguard, Devid (Enno Trebs). To Leon’s annoyance, the friendly Felix introduces himself to Devid and invites him to join them for dinner.
Nadja, who is more astute than Leon understands, perceives the anxiety and discomfort behind Leon’s pomposity and attempts to draw him out. His publisher is coming to visit to talk about the new book, and Leon fears it’s going to be bad news.
“Can I read it?” Nadja offers.
“Certainly not,” says Leon. “Don’t get me wrong, but one misplaced remark, one stupid comment…”
When Leon’s publisher, Helmut (Matthias Brandt), arrives, the older man is more interested in Nadja and her unexpectedly rich knowledge of poetry than in Leon’s apparently hackneyed, solipsistic novel. A new romantic connection takes place within the group, further shaking Leon’s sense of his place in the order of things.
Nadja remains kind to Leon until she hits her limit when a crisis happens, and, she doesn’t hold back her contempt for Leon’s self-absorption. His rather satisfying humiliation coincides with a literal wind change: The rumoured wildfires close in and the film’s tone transitions from cringing social comedy to something closer to a surreal nightmare.
The sky is alight at night with the approaching wall of flames, ash begins to fall like confetti and water bomb planes drone overhead, and the woods are filled with terrified wildlife.
The tonal transition may seem too abrupt, too obviously manipulated. But in the context of this summer’s headlines, the apocalyptic threat to a generation’s hopes feels like something more urgent than a cinematic metaphor. That’s not the film’s end, which takes us through one more twist to a place that is more open-ended, possibly even hopeful.
Petzold has said Afire is the second part of a trilogy inspired by the elements that began with the water theme of Undine. Whether the next film focuses on the earth or air, we can predict a film in which conventional expectations are both acknowledged and artfully unsettled.
Afire. Directed and written by Christian Petzold. Starring Thomas Schubert, Paula Beer, Langston Uibel, Enno Trebs, Matthias Brandt. Afire opens at TIFF Bell Lightbox and select theatres across Canada on July 14.