Writer-director Christian Petzold is one of the best screenwriters on the planet, and his style of filmmaking is a kind of modest formality that excels at showcasing his incredible writing and the terrific performances he spins from it. The domestic dramas in the foreground are often compared against the chaos of the world that surrounds them. In his latest film, Afire, a pretentious writer (Thomas Schubert) struggles to contend with a beautiful woman (Paula Beer) staying at the same beach house as him. Forest fires are raging in the  village near Northern Germany, their nights occasionally interrupted by a red glowing in the sky or chunks of ash falling like snow. As the situation becomes more grim, our protagonist’s fixation continues on the woman, unmoored by her unbounded freedom.

Schubert plays Leon, a young novelist whose manuscript is near due. His friend, Felix (Langston Uibel), has a house near the beach where both of them can work. Felix is trying to finish his portfolio for his art school application, but it’s obvious that he sees the trip at least partially as a holiday, where Leon sees it as strictly work. When they arrive at the house, they realize that someone else is already staying there, and Leon begrudgingly agrees to share the space. Nadja (Beer) is a seasonal food service worker whose nights are spent cooking food, listening to music, and having loud sex with a nearby lifeguard named Devid (Enno Trebs). All of these things ruin Leon’s sleep, exasperated by their fellow guest’s lack of tact. When he meets Nadja face-to-face, he’s struck dumb by her beauty, but is quick project his literary arrogance onto her.

Leon fears that his book is bad. It’s title, “Club Sandwich”, reeks of trite post-modernism. While he aspires toward artistic honesty, his own struggles with personal expression root themselves in his writing as well. Surrounded by people whose main concerns seem to be what to cook for dinner or a good time to visit the beach, Leon’s high-strung pomposity reaches a fever pitch, lashing out at those around him to make up for his own inflamed insecurity. Even as Nadja, Felix, and Devid express concern about the encroaching fires, Leon still fixates on his book and the woman he’s convinced is preventing him from actualizing it. When Leon is visited by his editor, Helmut (Matthias Brandt), who also is enchanted by Nadja, Leon’s frustrations (professional, sexual, emotional) begin to overflow.

There are some good moments here and Schubert proves to be a very good, very believable curmudgeon. The meaningless things that nag at him, the imagined slights he hears in everyone’s comments, the betrayals he creates out of thin air, really create a painfully realistic image of the artist rarely seen on the screen. A majority of this film, though, is a dud, unfortunately. Beer has become Petzold’s preferred actress of late (the halcyon days of his collaborations with Nina Hoss are missed dearly), and she never really sells Nadja’s own interest in Leon, a man whose continued rudeness seems to mostly roll off her back. The allusions to climate change feel both clunky and hollow, like something out of Leon’s half-baked novel. Afire‘s ending has some real poignancy, and Petzold has always had a knack for the perfect conclusion, but everything that precedes it lags with the droll disdain of its main character.

 

Written and Directed by Christian Petzold