Review: Fire of Love (2022)
Most tragic love stories hinge on characteristics of its central lovers that some people may find romantic, while others delusional. The tension between these two ways of viewing tragic romance helps fuel Sara Dosa’s Fire of Love, even if the film ultimately favours the romantic way of seeing its central relationship.
Dosa’s documentary charts the doomed marriage of French volcanologists, Katia and Maurice Krafft, who died during a volcanic eruption in Japan in 1991. Katia and Maurice were madly in love—with volcanoes and with each other. In many respects, their love for volcanoes was the foundation of their love for each other, but they were also both oddballs, visionaries, explorers, and daredevils. Fire of Love is a testament to their passion and their research. It’s also explicitly a tragic love story, with the very thing that brought Katia and Maurice together—their willingness to risk life and limb to observe volcanoes—directly causing their deaths.
I’ve long said that the strength of a documentary is largely dependent on the quality of its footage and Fire of Love has exceptional footage, all taken from the archive of Maurice, who produced documentary films and did lecture tours in order to fund their travel and research. Katia, for her part, was more enamoured of still photography. Both had the eyes of an artist, so director Sara Dosa has a wealth of great material to work with as she charts Katia and Maurice’s lives and careers. Some of it is astounding for what it depicts: flowing rivers of lava coursing down a mountainside; geysers of flame and rock dancing behind Katia and Maurice decked out in protective gear; a pyroclastic cloud rushing across the horizon like the plume of an atom bomb.
Other bits of footage are astounding for how they’re depicted with mirth or a cheeky gallows humour, which is present in the original footage but accentuated by Dosa’s editorial decisions. This includes the perfect framing of Katia in front of a volcano with a zoom out that reveals a geyser of fire behind her, which plays the reveal like a sight gag, or the absurd image of Maurice paddling through a lake of sulphuric acid in a dinghy, wearing a bucket hat like he’s out for a lazy paddle at the cottage. Throughout it all, the wit and curiosity of Katia and Maurice is on display, as is their adoration of the volcanoes they study, no matter how destructive.
Like other documentaries derived entirely from archival footage, the film never quite clarifies the ethical murkiness of presenting Katia and Maurice’s footage in ways they never intended. For instance, while Katia and Maurice were famously self-deprecating and open about their daredevil ways, they did not necessarily have a death wish, while Dosa’s film makes it seem like they were always fated to die this way and that they’d be at peace with such an end. In fact, this framing that they were always going to die this way is key to Dosa’s entire presentation. She curates the footage in such a way as to make it inevitable and to justify their deaths due to the unparalleled insight their work afforded, which has helped save lives by forwarding the development of eruption prediction and detection systems.
In its defense, Fire of Love is upfront about its curated nature. It is not cinéma vérité documentary storytelling. Dosa’s narration, written along with Shane Boris, Erin Casper, and Jocelyn Chaput and performed by actor and filmmaker Miranda July, presents Katia and Maurice’s story like something out of a picture book, complete with fanciful narration about their lives and the occasional animated graphics and intertitles to segue between years. At times, this approach can veer towards seeming overly manufactured, but it also bears evidence of Dosa’s authorial imprint, offering a structure and presentation that differs from Maurice’s documentary filmmaking approach. Furthermore, the film is moving, so Dosa’s framing ultimately proves successful.
Perhaps the documentary’s finest feature is how it lets us see volcanoes as Katia and Maurice did: with respect, with fear, but mostly, with awe. It’s a tragic love story as well as a testament to the beauty, power, and mystery of the natural world.
8 out of 10
Fire of Love (2022, USA/Canada)
Directed by Sara Dosa; written by Sara Dosa, Shane Boris, Erin Casper, and Jocelyn Chaput; narrated by Miranda July.
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