Who by Fire

Despite its constricted, isolated setting, the film feels more psychologically expansive than its predecessors.

All of Who by Fire exists in this in-between space, which is what makes it so thrilling, so unpredictable. We keep waiting for something awful to happen. That something turns out to be life.

Lesage supplies exemplary tension and intrigue over the course of two plus hours, while at the same time suggesting to the viewer, accurately, that anything in the way of a definitive resolution is not in the cards.

Lesage’s characters may talk a lot, but because he avoids exposition, he ends up overloading the story with dramatically heightened episodes.

One of Who by Fire’s greatest assets is Philippe Lesage’s willingness to shift the tenor of the film to fit the wildly divergent narrative concerns of any given sequence.

Despite its unassuming scenario, Lesage orchestrates these various storylines like a conductor, slowly bringing each story into a solo before unleashing their collective sounds in a symphony.

I only wished it did even one thing more adventurous than its countless predecessors.

There’s nothing we can do to prevent that flame from igniting, try as we might from our side of the screen, and the characters’ ultimate tragedy is that there’s nothing they can do either.

Who by Fire excels on all fronts except editing. Director Philippe Lesage’s coming-of-age story is incredibly smart, but feels like a rough cut.


Lesage demonstrates a keen eye for nuance and meditative mise-en-scène, even as he eventually leads us to some explosive and wrenching events, where tables are turned and expectations reversed.