Fire Will Come

Laxe delivers a surreal, breathtaking opener, and shines a light on the interior struggles of a troubled loner.

Quiet, slow-moving, ambiguous character studies might be a dime a dozen on the festival circuit, but there are few that remind us that there are things out there that still feel as big as myth.

"Fire Will Come" is a pithy and devastating masterstroke from an auteur astute in his calibration of subdued emotional impact. Its discourse on forgiveness simmers in one's mind inextinguishably.

At only 80 minutes and change, Fire Will Come is slim, distilled and as sharp as a shiv to the gut.

The result is a short and elliptical tale that unfolds at the speed of life and resolves with the hopeful uncertainty of forgiveness itself.

Amador's story is unfortunately never as emotionally arresting or complex as the film's opening scene.

Laxe is one of the most curious filmmakers working right now, and the fact that he hasn’t settled into one storytelling mode yet keeps me curious as to what’s next.

The plot is minimal and would only take a couple of lines to describe, but Olivier Laxe's film is about the lack of human communication due to discretion, distrust, and silence. [Full review in Spanish]

Unfortunately, it has little emotional force and the characters function as simple figures of clay that are burned over a slow fire only to add some depth to a text as inane as it is pretentious. [Full review in Spanish]

In the end feels as if the director had little interest in filming anything other than the fire -- and merely constructed the pretense of a story in order to capture it.