A subtly satirical take on the tortured artist trope, Afire is the latest effort from German writer and director Christian Petzold. The plot follows struggling author Leon (Thomas Schubert) and his photographer friend Felix (Langston Uibel) on a trip to a seaside holiday home to get some inspiration. On their arrival they find that they’re not the only guests, and their fellow lodger Nadja (Paula Beer) keeps them up through the nights as she entertains her lifeguard lover Devid (Enno Trebs). What begins as a work retreat soon turns into something quite different as procrastination leads to unexpected passion.
As ponderous as the progress made by Leon and Felix on their creative endeavours, the narrative takes its time to settle on a tone. Straddling genres at a snail’s pace, it eventually serves mainly as a dry character study of its grumpy, self-centred, and pretty unlikeable protagonist. As the story develops, forest fires start breaking out nearby which creates a societal microcosm of sorts; the creeping threat of climate change closing in on an oblivious sulking writer that only cares about himself. This metaphor playing out within the work of an indie arthouse filmmaker feels smartly self-deprecating, Petzold slyly looking inward as he pokes fun at the somewhat hollow aspects of art. He even has Leon title his new novel ‘Club Sandwich’ in an amusing nod to Charles Bukowski’s Ham on Rye, the emblematic bible of male pretension.
For the third film in a row, Petzold has placed Paula Beer in a pivotal role. As the carefree Nadja wearing flowing dresses and riding her bike to a job at an ice-cream stand, she is initially seen only through Leon’s shallow male gaze. In his eyes, she is the manic pixie Deutsch girl and this furthers the irony of the director’s self-deprecation, playing with the concept of the artist and his muse. Though there are some interesting ideas at play, the elements never burn as bright as they should in the execution. Not funny enough to be considered a comedy or romantic enough to be a romance, Afire is a confused portrait of an artist as an insufferable prat.
Cinema Perspective 