Sundance 2022: Fire of Love
sundance 2022The biopic genre of documentary filmmaking is often one of the most butchered genres of filmmaking there is. Telling a story of the past, plenty of features take stale and academic approaches that fail to engage audiences emotionally or spiritually. This can lead to a harmful stigmatisation of the genre which many associate with boring and drawn-out lectures more than anything else. Luckily, over the last number of decades, more and more biopics have worked to change this identity. By providing meaningful and poignant messages alongside inspired filmmaking that speaks to the audience on a more humanistic wavelength, some of the best films of the last few decades have been biopics, with Sara Dosa's Fire of Love rising towards the top of this list.
On paper, Fire of Love lives as a biopic chronicling the lives of Katia and Maurice Krafft. Katia and Maurice met as they traveled the world studying volcanos and found not just a deep love for their work, but also a love for each other. They became known as two of the most important and daring volcanologists in the world until they tragically died doing the very thing that they loved. In actuality, however, Fire of Love is so much more than just this. Using the words, footage, and story of Katia and Maurice, Fire of Love is a passionate dissertation on love itself and what someone is willing to risk and give up to feel the emotions' embrace.
Love is everywhere in Fire of Love. It seeps through its floorboards and fills every frame with a romantic tension that is so thick one could cut it with a knife. Undeniably indebted to the amount of content left behind from the couple who chronicled their emotions and relationship in detail, the film is able to craft a clear and empathetic picture into their relationship which acts as a near-flawless starting point for the film's larger messages. It is almost relentless just how powerful their connection feels not just with each other but also through their work. It truly feels as if they had found the best possible outcome for their lives with a rich stream of unaltered happiness and passion flowing from every word they write and clip they film. This comes with sacrifice, however, which the film highlights in an effort to further show the power of love. Within this focus on the couple, the film allows the audience to engage in a more personal manner. It is hard not to bring one's own relationship with passion and romance in relation to the life they live which allows the film to connect on a deeper level that will leave a far greater impact than if it was just naming facts about this couple.
Fire of Love achieves this success largely in the filmmaking behind the project. Using stunning footage captured by its subjects which have aged into the perfect vein of being dynamic yet clearly older, the film pops with its colors in an exciting and vibrant sense, with the editing speaking to that of the French New Wave. It also features one of the best voiceover performances in recent memory from Miranda July who serves as the narrator of the project. July is empathetic and poetic in her voice and dialogue, only adding to the romantic seduction of the project as a whole. These elements come together to create a film not only poetic and poignant in its words but also in its emotions. The film bleeds a feeling so powerful that there simply is no vocabulary adequate to describe it. This is similar to the power of the emotion of love itself. One can discuss love, one can analyse love, one can show love, but nothing comes close to feeling love.
Even with the absolutely incredible list of documentaries to come from the last five years alone, Fire of Love undeniably feels like one of the best ever to be seen. The feature succeeds on a deep and personal level that transcends what many would expect the genre even to be capable of doing. This not only paints a loving portrait for the two subjects of the feature but also gives the audience an experience to engage with and take away ideas and messages reflecting on their own lives. When one thinks of what documentary filmmaking can accomplish, it is hard to think of higher asperations than what Fire of Love accomplishes, with the film truly becoming one of the most special projects of the year.
