Whereas Petzold isn’t identified for something like overt jokiness, he’s poking slightly enjoyable at himself right here. Because it occurs, “Afire” (its unique German title is “Roter Himmel” or “Purple Sky”) is the second movie of a quartet whose theme would be the parts; Petzold’s final movie, “Undine,” had water as its defining component. The hearth on this movie spreads via forests on the German island the place Leon and Felix have gone on a piece retreat.
After their automobile breaks down and so they’re compelled to hoof it to a trip home owned by Felix’s household, Leon and Felix, the exact nature of whose relationship we’re by no means fairly certain of, are shocked that there’s one other lodger there. The beguiling Nadja is performed by the beguiling Paula Beer within the third of her movies with Petzold. (In “Undine,” she performed a mermaid. Form of.) Nadja is heard earlier than she is seen, participating in enthusiastic intercourse in the primary bed room of the thin-walled home. This makes Leon silently, seethingly loopy—virtually the whole lot makes Leon silently, seethingly loopy—but it surely turns Felix on slightly bit. When lastly seen, Nadja is cheerful and open. Quickly we meet her intercourse companion, Devid—the spelling, Felix notes, in “an outdated GDR quirk”—who’s a rescue swimmer on the seaside. As Felix, Devid, and Nadja benefit from the summer season, Leon frets over his newest novel. His editor, a kindly older man, is coming to the island to debate the manuscript of the novel, titled “Membership Sandwich.” Shortly after he learns that Nadja spends her days as an ice cream vendor close to the island’s deluxe lodge, Nadja asks him to take a look at the ebook. He scoffs. A cleansing girl as soon as requested him to learn a narrative of his, and he or she pronounced it “slightly schmaltzy.” If the evaluation of a cleansing girl may set off such a paroxysm of self-doubt … effectively, Leon doesn’t full that thought, however we get it. When his editor exhibits up, Leon is in for a shock about Nadja that ups the ante in what appears to be a sad-sack comedy of failure.
For a lot of “Afire,” Petzold actually drops the hammer down on Leon, and the whole lot that occurs to him does nothing to compel him to react with any much less petulance. When Felix and Devid begin their very own sexual affair—which Nadja has no downside with and which Leon observes with a imprecise exasperation—the dramatic stakes of the film ascend not not like the flames that the quartet can see from the roof of their home because it devours forest land.
Petzold has been quietly and industriously constructing one in every of this century’s most persistently spectacular filmographies. The compulsive literacy (and literary-allusive) dialogue right here, mixed with the exact however unshowy mise-en-scene and enhancing, might, for some, recall to mind the late, nice Èric Rohmer. However Petzold, whereas not with out humor, is a typically graver filmmaker than Rohmer, and the way in which this movie steers into tragedy is wrenching. It results in a conclusion that in some respects might be referred to as pat, but it surely additionally justifies itself effectively sufficient—largely because of the distinctive work of the actors, significantly Schubert and Beer—to move muster. Like all of Petzold’s current photos, “Afire” attracts you in confidently and prepares its knockout emotional punch with scrupulousness and a vivid sense of shock.
Now taking part in in theaters.
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