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Complete with lengthy, ominous dissolves, it really does feel like an homage to Stanley KubricksThe Shining.
Dinner conversations ramble on and become contentious confrontations, often captured in single shots.
Some dialogue exchanges even edge into the realm of cringe comedy, without ever going full-bore Apatow.
People wander into the night, and then they keep going.
Lesages scenes extend well beyond conventional limits.
Clocking in at 155 minutes,Who by Fireis not short.
But it captures the imprecise language and ungainly rhythms of reality so well that you lose sense of time.
But thats too pat a way of describing something so slippery and alive.
Because Lesage doesnt foreshadow his narrative throughlines, were even more adrift than usual.
An exchange might dance around buried offenses and then explode in a torrent of pettiness.
A casual comment might cause a horrid wound, while a bolder statement gets shrugged off.
Lesages style hovers somewhere between the work of John Cassavetes and Michael Haneke, two extremes youdthinkwould be unreconcilable.
The results are exacting, but ambiguous.
The camera lingers on the hands, and we mull these nearly imperceptible movements.
They could mean nothing, or they could mean the world.
All ofWho by Fireexists 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.
