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Quebec filmmaker Philippe Lesage began his career making documentaries in the early 2000s. He has since moved on to feature films, but they have been deeply shaped by his experiences in documentary, in both their simple and compelling ways. In Demons (2015), set in the 1980s, Lesage explored the quiet terrors and mounting uncertainties of his own adolescence with an uneasy yet disciplined attentiveness. He closely observed his characters, both up close and from a distance, often using a fixed camera, allowing scenes to unfold slowly, without interruption or rush. His style became more relaxed and mature in Genesis (2018), a harrowing trio of short stories driven by the unruly and often unrequited yearnings of adolescence. Yet even here, the drama was fueled by an eerie intensity of observation, and again demonstrated a reluctance to turn away too soon.
It’s notable, then, that one of the characters in “Who by Fire,” Lesage’s patient and emotionally charged new film, is a middle-aged Canadian director who has essentially followed his creator’s path in the opposite direction. The director, Blake Cadieux (Arieh Worthalter), had early success making feature films—he even won an Oscar—but has since moved away from the mainstream and now works in documentaries. “Who by Fire” unfolds over a few days and nights in a remote mountainous region of Quebec, where Blake, the owner of a cabin in the area, has invited a few friends and colleagues to stay. It never becomes clear exactly when the action takes place, though cellphones are conspicuously absent, not least because of the Wi-Fi problem at altitude; one of the guests, who is working on a novel, has brought along a manual typewriter.
Early in the film, one of the guests, a screenwriter named Albert Gary (Paul Ahmarani), is on his way to meet Blake, bringing with him his college-aged daughter, Alyosha (Aurelia Arandi-Longpré); his son, Max (Antoine Marchand-Gagnon); and Max’s friend, Jeff (Noah Parker). The boys are in the late stages of adolescence, and Jeff, who dreams of becoming a filmmaker, is eager to win Blake’s affections by picking them up in a floatplane and taking them to the cabin. His excitement at meeting the director is matched by—and ultimately exceeds—his excitement at being close to Alyosha. We become aware of his feelings almost immediately when Jeff, sitting nervously next to her in the backseat of the car, slips his hand into the gap between his legs and hers. You can almost see his hand “thinking,” so intently does the camera record his every movement and hesitation. You might remember this close-up later, when Jeff's hand is moved into a more aggressive position after Alyosha rejects his clumsy attempts at flirting.
Lesage is attentive to these emotional outbursts; in the steady build-up and sudden release of tension, he shows how quickly superficial barriers of politeness can crumble. Shortly after meeting Blake, Jeff mentions Blake’s semi-military autobiography, then asks him a too-blunt question about his family history. “You don’t hold back,” Blake replies. But he doesn’t hold back either, and Worthalter, who played a fiery defendant in the excellent French legal drama The Goldman Affair (2023), peels back Blake’s friendly, smiling layers to reveal the arrogant alpha beneath.
Blake and Albert are longtime friends and former collaborators, the films they worked on together have been their greatest career successes, and it’s clear before they even get to the cabin that their meeting will be rocky. The first thing Blake does when they meet is subject Albert to a seemingly innocuous joke, which Albert, himself a bit of a prankster, laughs off easily, though the underlying hostility is thinly disguised. Later, at the cabin, there’s an unnervingly funny scene in which Blake throws Albert down on the bed and, despite his exasperated protests, kisses his bare stomach. It’s a riotous display of male brotherhood whose performative exaggeration exposes, blurring the line where affection ends and aggression begins.
Of course, aggression soon takes center stage. Who by Fire is organized around three cleverly modulated dinners, each shot in a continuous take that makes great use of the film’s expressive widescreen compositions. (The cinematographer is Balthazar Lab.) Blake and Albert, their tongues loosened by wine, open up again, then furiously reopen old wounds, shouting out personal failures and professional betrayals. Blake is accused of sliding into pompous seriousness; Albert, now working in television, is branded a sellout. The camera fixates on them, its calm, unblinking gaze heightening the anxiety.
Sourse: newyorker.com
