Imperfect Getaway:
An Interview with Philippe Lesage (Who by Fire)
By Chris Shields
The new film by Canadian filmmaker Philippe Lesage, Who by Fire, like his 2018 breakout Genesis, explores the moribund passions of the middle-aged, contrasting them with the dizzying, uninitiated passions of youth. The two meet in precise, meaningful, and even disturbing ways. In Who by Fire, aspiring young filmmaker Jeff (Noah Parker) is invited to vacation with his friend Max (Antoine Marchand); Max’s father, Albert (Paul Ahmarani); and his friend’s sister, Aliocha (Aurélia Arandi-Longpré), at the remote cabin of a filmmaker he admires named Blake (Arieh Worthalter). The simmering tension between former collaborators Albert and Blake quickly comes to light, growing stronger and pettier before it explodes into something truly nasty and uncomfortable. Meanwhile, Jeff is pursuing Aliocha, only to be thwarted by his own adolescent horniness and the girl’s burgeoning relationship with the wannabe alpha male director. The web of desire and animus expands in unexpected ways in Lesage’s novelesque film, which conjures achingly relatable emotions.
Lesage began in documentary, and the form’s requisite patience and observation remain in view in his narrative fictions. In Who by Fire, conversations turn into heated arguments during long, unbroken takes. We watch as understandings, misunderstandings, passive aggressive comments, and aggressive barbs dredge up an ugly substratum of contempt and pride, both wounded and inflated, beneath a fragile veneer of civility. As the adults jockey for position, Aliocha, Max, and Jeff navigate their own more naked and tender conflicts.
Lesage is not looking for easy answers in his work, and he’s adamantly opposed to telling his audience who to root for. While his films are darkly funny, they are also the inheritors of a more serious European existential and Freudian tradition exemplified by Ozon, Bergman, Breillat, and a host of others, in which the human heart and mind are often the sites of unresolvable dramas. Lesage spoke with me about the freedom he seeks in his work, how annoying (and limiting) social issue movies can be, toxic masculinity, and bad reviews on Letterboxd.
Reverse Shot: Where did the film begin? What was the inspiration?
Philippe Lesage: I don’t know if you've seen Genesis or The Demons (2015), but they were quite personal films, based on my own childhood and teenagehood, and I was doing a kind of revisitation of those years, with a lot of freedom, of course, but still taking some things directly from life. I think that when you take directly from life, it's always more original and interesting than if you use your imagination because it's unique by its very nature. We all experience great emotions and events in a unique way. Everybody has experienced love, but it's not the same for everyone. The first love is something very different for everybody. This said, I was sitting at a party with my big brother. It was before I started to shoot Genesis. We are very close friends and he’s a bit older than me and he makes documentaries. And I remember that when he was young, he got invited to this cabin in the woods. He was invited by a legendary Canadian filmmaker. I remember when he came back, he was talking about how somebody, not him, but somebody, got lost in the forest. There were these small things, like he was invited by a friend of his, and this friend of his had a big sister. And so my imagination started to run, and I told my brother that night that this is going to be my next film.
RS: And then you began writing the script?
PL: I really loved the premise of this young innocent guy, completely immature. Immature, but also with passion for love and hunger for love, and passion for cinema. And then meeting a director he admires. So, I took all the liberties I could from that. Then the story became something very different from his, because it didn't go as far as it's going in the film. When I do a film and when I write, the most important thing is to be free and to let my intuition go and take control. And I'm never trying to do a well-structured or by the book script. And I'm also not trying to make the perfect film.
RS: If that’s the case, what are you hoping for when you make a film?
PL: What I value the most is to be free. And as long as I’m writing a film that I want to see as a cinephile, I think I’m on the right track. I’m writing a film because I want to, because I'm excited to write it. I’m not writing it because I want to please anyone. The first person I want to please is myself. And I think it’s the only way, to be honest, to do it. And also the only way to touch people. I’m not naive. I know not everybody likes my films. We got good reviews this time. Yes, so far. I know I have a couple of one-star reviews on a Letterboxd, but I also have a lot of five stars. And that is normal when you have a kind of personal approach to the medium. Yes, there's money involved, but it's not like somebody is going to go bankrupt, because we have this beautiful system in Canada. And I wish we will stay an independent country just because of that. It’s amazing.
RS: What are you focusing on if not perfection or big profits?
PL: I try not to think, okay, I'm going to do a film about this subject or that subject because I hate issue films. I was on a jury just recently because I’m in Scandinavia right now. The issue films always want to make a moral statement and give you lessons. It’s the last thing I want to do, even if I’m dealing with a lot of issues, of course, but I’m not here to be a judge above everybody or tell you who’s the bad guy. I want my characters to be human in the first place. And as humans, they are often quite annoying and sometimes they're capable of doing absolutely amazing stuff as well.
RS: I appreciate that; it’s a humanistic approach. And I think what makes the film special is that in that freedom. But certain themes do emerge, and they are explored through who is positioned where in the film, power-wise.
PL: It’s totally true. And I think it has something to do with making a film about the issue of masculinity and toxic masculinity. It’s all over the place in my film in the sense that I’m deconstructing masculinity and I'm making fun of it. But I’m not harshly punishing my characters who are doing stupid things. It’s funny to see how some people take it seriously and say, ‘Oh, this is about how terrible the life of a white man is.’ I'm making fun of the fucking thing! I mean most people do get it, of course, but it’s unbelievable that educated people can think like this. It's a take, and that’s what is beautiful about art. I'm deconstructing the structure of films when I do a film. And it’s not because I want to deconstruct, it’s because as I said, I let myself be completely guided by my intuition.
But yes, I’ve been questioning masculinity for a long time, and it’s in all my films. In Genesis, the young people are crushed by the fucking adults. And I could say Who by Fire is in some ways a satire about patriarchs. You're talking about power and power struggle, and it is in the film. The older the men are, the more dangerous they are in many ways because the libido is going down and the power desire is going up. And you can see that among the people who are now in control of your country. It's really scary because if you think of the history of war, for instance, it's older people, old men sending young flesh, young men especially, to death. To death because they symbolize a certain kind of sexual rivalry. So there's that. That’s the unconscious of my film when it comes to the relationship with Blake and the young people.
RS: And Blake is a really interesting character. His performance of masculinity is such a bourgeois affectation.
PL: I mean, it’s the type of men who say, I don’t cry. Because men don’t cry. But they cry. I thought it was gone, but it’s still present. I thought I was portraying all these obsolete men based on whatever figure I had in my mind when I wrote the script. It could be a Hemingway mixed with John Houston and some Canadian filmmakers and Bergman, I put all that stuff in that character. But then I realized, my God, this is completely still there. We were moving towards a more feminine era, or at least an era where masculinity is not stuck into those prejudices of men not talking about their emotions or just admitting that they’re wrong and saying they’re sorry. Blake will never say sorry. We understand that. So yes, it was a big pleasure to deconstruct that.
RS: What you mentioned politically is relevant now. You think these things go away, but in times of crises these antiquated ways of being become safe places for people to run back to and to resurrect this idea of masculinity.
PL: I think I have a certain kind of idealism towards femininity and towards my female characters because they’re kind of above the brawl, and we can sense that they have their dignity. And the character of Aliocha. Everyone in the film pretends to be an artist or wants to be an artist, but she is the only one actually writing during the film and who has a real project that we know she's working on.
RS: Speaking about these characters, the casting is really superb. Can you just talk about the casting process for the film?
PL: The casting process was very, very long because I didn't write the film having somebody in mind. I was thinking about actors. I thought Brad Pitt could have done a fantastic job for Blake, but I had the money to make the film in French. Maybe I will remake it with Brad Pitt—throwing this into the universe. I think that the Blake character was very hard for me to find because I wanted the virile, credible woodsy guy, hunter, artist, fisherman without it being a stupid, silly caricature. I think it is much easier to find characters who are, like the Albert character, the neurotic male—we have plenty of those in Quebec and in France. I love them. The danger for me with Blake was to make him the bad guy. And of course, I don't want to separate the good guys from the bad guys.
RS: Paul Ahmarani is tremendous as Albert. Vulnerable, funny, living an honest, real existence. And someone like Blake is the opposite of him.
PL: Absolutely. It was really night and day if you compare the two kinds of men they are. But I also thought it was interesting that Albert, even if he’s more transparent and honest, he uses his own neuroses to get attention. And so he does also lack a kind of empathy. There’s major things that he doesn’t seem to see during the whole movie. He didn't see the forest, he just saw one little tree, a meaningless tree.
RS: The film has such a dark look, it reminded me of Alain Guiraudie’s Stranger by the Lake in some very particular moments like when Jeff is lost in the forest. What were you drawing from cinematically?
PL: I was told recently by people who saw the film that it looked very European. But it’s funny because I was trying to do my most American film, in a way. But of course, I directed it. So, I cannot change my style that much. I'm not such a thing as a director for hire. I don't understand how directors can accept offers to direct episodes of something that they have no creative power in. And the thing is already completely established; the set, the tone, the artistic direction, the casting, and then they are asked to do what, like say, cut and let’s roll. I mean, that’s another story. I want to keep my singularity.
Who by Fire is being released by KimStim Films.
Top photo credit: Valérian Mazataud