Fire of Love

Visually stunning, beautiful, awe-inspiring, poetic, and extraordinary documentary featuring tons of lava and a love story that feels like another eccentric Wes Anderson film. Maurice & Katia Krafft were a unique, passionate, quirky, and inspiring couple that loved getting up & close with volcanos and living life on the edge.

SIFF 2022 Watch #5.

This film tells the story of two scientists who study volcanoes, which leads to their marriage and shared research. The setup might have been too sentimental for my taste but director Sara Dosa sure knows how to tell a story, bringing together amazing archival footage, the most amazing of which features the couple that undertook this dangerous and wonderful work. This was one of the best films at Sundance in 2022.

Gorgeous volcano footage captured by the subjects of the documentary. But I could really do without the breathy, disinterested female narrator, acting like all life is a passing dream. You don't learn very much about Maurice and Katia's work except that they sure did love volcanos!

I ended up having similar feelings with this documentary as I did with "The Biggest Little Farm": A film made for California hippies who want to gaze wondrously at nature without actually learning anything.

I think that I would be more inclined to seek out the films which Maurice and Katia created themselves, rather than watching this one again. But this is a decent, pretty-looking time killer.

There are fuses where their length is undefined, ticking time bombs where the clock faces are blind, explosive discharge they pre-empt, as the earth expels ferment, red or grey, depending how the plates combined. These are landscapes where a couple used to graft, where they practiced, learned, and developed their Krafft, among the pyroclastic flows, volcanoes in their death throes, they enjoyed their time together, life was a blast.

A wonderful piece of filmmaking about an eccentric couple who found love among the volatile and explosive environments found in and around the those parts of the world where the planet vents its spleen.

Katia, Maurice and the volcano: a fiery menage a trois that will not end well, unless of course, it really is better to burn out than to fade away. For a movie that begins with a startling spoiler (our French lovers succumb to their lust for lava), "Fire of Love" spends the entirety of this documentary giddily championing our infectiously doomed couple as they crisscross the globe in search of volcanic activity.

Not flighty danger seekers, the Kraffts were dedicated volcanologists and filmmakers who faced danger with acceptance but also with a joie de vivre. Among spectacular in situ footage we are also treated to Maurice peppering the talk show circuit, eagerly detailing their latest escapades with boyish exuberance, some humour, and scientific wonder.

This is a man who professed his greatest wish in absolute seriousness was riding a canoe down a river of lava. Instead of shooting down this frivolous dream, Katia notes that it would have to be made of rocketship grade metal. All that is missing is a steady rain of heart emojis throughout the screening. It makes one want to dispatch for the nearest eruption. Almost.

This is where film comes in: we can enjoy an exciting, dangerous dance with death, learn a few things, and cherish the power of unbridled love. A raison d'etre shared, is what makes the world go round, or explode.

A bientot.

HipCRANK.