In this interview, Québécois filmmaker Philippe Lesage discusses his new Berlinale Generation 14plus film Comme le feu (Who by Fire).
Read our interview with Lesage on Les démons, his first narrative film. Read our interview with Lesage on Genèse and our in-depth exploration of the film through interviews and essays in The 2019 Canadian Cinema Yearbook
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Ever since his first narrative feature, Les démons (The Demons) (2015), Québécois filmmaker Philippe Lesage has established himself as one of Canada’s leading auteurs with a strong formal directorial approach and an interest in playing with the structure and expectations of cinema. His films tend to put young people at their centre, often trying to understand the flawed, and even toxic, adults around them. As Lesage put it, when describing his new film, Comme le feu (Who by Fire), his adolescent characters observe adults who are meant to be “role models, but they don’t act like role models.”
In Les Démons (2015), the film takes the limited perspective of pre-adolescent Félix, puzzling out a world where his parents fight openly and cruelly and don’t hide their sex lives as well as they think. A local pool has also been the site of a disappearance of a young boy Félix’s age. Genèse (2018) focused on two teenage siblings who meet verbal and physical violence, respectively, while trying to explore their confusing sexual feelings. He (Théodore Pellerin) faces homophobia and ostracization; his sister (Noée Abita) gets sexually assaulted.
New Philippe Lesage film Comme le feu (Who by Fire) continues to explore masculinity and violence
With Comme le feu (Who by Fire), Québécois filmmaker Lesage continues to explore toxic masculinity, casual violence, and untrustworthy adults, but with a broader canvas. The film won the Grand Prix of the Generation’s International Jury for the Best 14plus Feature Film at this year’s Berlinale. Comme le feu is an ensemble film about a group stuck in a cabin in the woods where tensions boil over. Although the film is told largely from the perspective of two adolescent characters, it focuses on the passive-aggressive friendship between two adult men — the host in the woods and the father of the family visiting — now stuck in a battle between wounded egos. The teenagers observe them, sometimes misguidedly imitate them, and have to find their way in a world with disappointing and misleading male role models.
Famous filmmaker Blake (Arieh Worthalter) invites his old friend and former collaborator Albert (Paul Ahmarani, star of La moitié gauche du frigo) to visit him in his secluded cabin in the woods. Albert arrives with his two teenage children in tow: Aliocha (Aurélia Arandi-Longpré), her young brother Max (Antoine Marchand-Gagnon, and his best friend Jeff (Noah Parker), who is unrequitedly crushing on Aliocha. But something isn’t quite right between Blake and Albert. They bond through passive-aggressive jokes with barely concealed spite. Blake makes it his mission to embarrass Albert at every turn, publicly poking fun at his work, his knowledge of wine, and anything else that will get a rise out of him, including trying to seduce his daughter. At the same time, Blake offers to mentor aspiring filmmaker Jeff but takes every opportunity to take him down a notch.
The threat of violence
Set over a very tense week, alliances form and shift. In the middle of the woods, violence constantly threatens to erupt — between the characters and the nature around them. A few remarkable ensemble dinner scenes, shot mainly in a single uninterrupted take, start as celebrations before turning sour, becoming a stage for Blake’s and Albert’s one-up-manship games. Their audience includes Albert’s children and Blake’s staff (Guillaume Laurin and Carlo Harrietha), Blake’s film editor (Sophie Desmarais), and Blake’s other visiting friends (Irène Jacob, Laurent Lucas).
Lesage juxtaposes these large indoor group scenes with more intimate scenes in smaller rooms or outdoors. It allows us to see how the characters behave differently in different contexts: Blake alone with his staff, Blake and Albert with an audience, Blake and Jeff, Jeff and Max in their room alone, Aliocha and Jeff alone, and beyond.
Although the film begins with an extended sequence of a car driving into the Quebec wilderness, an invitation for a genre film, Comme le feu is very much a character drama. Genre films like Deliverance and Platoon inspired Lesage in their depictions of toxic masculinity. But the violence in Comme le feu is primarily emotional.
Playing with structure
Like Lesage’s Genèse, which played with structure by telling separate stories of connected characters before ending with a coda featuring characters from Les démons (The Demons) in a completely different setting, Comme le Feu also plays with structure and form. The film’s opening shot is of Jeff’s and Aliocha’s hands on their knees, seated next to each other in the car en route to the cottage. Jeff tentatively considers touching her, and the film unfolds from his outsider perspective — an outsider from Albert’s family and Blake’s world. As the film progresses, Aliocha increasingly becomes our perspective character, the one person who can see through the men and their nonsense and find a way not to be wholly sucked into it. The film’s final image echoes its opening, only it’s her knees and her inner world now front and centre.
Introducing the interview with Philippe Lesage on his film Comme le feu (Who by Fire)
I spoke to writer-director Lesage before the world premiere of Comme le feu (Who by Fire) at Berlin. Our conversation built on my previous discussion with Lesage about Les démons, when I interviewed him about his approach to sound, story, and music. It also builds on Justine Smith’s deep dive into Lesage’s Genèse in The 2019 Canadian Cinema Yearbook with an interview with Lesage and his long-time editor, Mathieu Bouchard-Malo, who also edited Comme le feu, about their collaboration.
In this interview, Lesage reflects on how his films are connected, how he has developed as a filmmaker, and the making of Comme le feu (Who by Fire). We discuss the film’s genesis and its themes. He also discusses how he approaches directing actors, editing, and creating scenes that allow us to consider the characters’ inner lives.
Seventh Row (7R): What is the genesis of the film Comme le feu (Who By Fire)?
Philippe Lesage: Like my last two films, Who By Fire explores some parts of adolescence. But this time, they are much more confronted by the adults. In Les démons and Genèse, the adults were present but not as active as in this one. The last two films were very autobiographical, but Who by Fire takes place in a setting that is foreign to me, in the woods, because I’m not a nature person! I have no interest in fishing and hunting. I feel very good in cities.
The idea for the film came from something that happened to my older brother, Jean-François Lesage, a documentarian. When we were kids, our neighbours invited him to spend a week in a cabin where a famous film director lived. A couple of years ago, my brother and I were at a boring party, and we started to talk. I asked him about that famous week that I heard was pretty intense. He told me the starting point for the film Who by Fire. I didn’t use any of the real stuff. I made it up. But somebody got lost in the forest when my brother was there, and I used that.
The premise of the story was fascinating to me. That evening, I told my brother it would be my next film. I liked the idea of this young man, whom I could project myself into, who has the chance to spend a week with a famous director. He has extremely high expectations. And then there would be other characters around him.
7R: What did you want to explore in the film Comme le feu (Who by Fire)?
Philippe Lesage: If you look at the history of violence and wars in the world, it’s always older men who make decisions, from their big houses and parliament, to send young boys to get killed. That tells something about the terribleness of human nature. I think, unconsciously, they see them as some sort of sexual rivals. That’s why they send them to get killed. I had this in mind during the writing. But I didn’t want to have these purely mean men. They are humans. They have their flaws, but we can find them endearing, too. We can get attached to Albert, but he also shows parts we don’t want to be like.
I’m going to be a father for the first time soon. When I was young, I was looking for mentors. I was disappointed every time. Once I stopped looking for mentors, things started improving in my life. I’m about to have a baby for the first time, and as a new father, I don’t want to repeat the toxic aspect of what it means to be a father. There’s something in the film that I’m exorcizing. I’m portraying two men that I don’t want to be like. I want to be a new sort of father.
I’m interested in exploring human nature, in its best and worst aspects, without being too judgmental.
7R: How did you find the film’s locations?
Philippe Lesage: We shot the film at the end of the summer and beginning of fall in 2022, in very remote locations, so it makes sense that you could only reach them by seaplane, as in the film. There was no electricity or water. We used a generator and brought our water. We were extremely lucky because we didn’t have snow or wildfires. The wildfires were a big catastrophe in those regions last year.
I spent a year scouting. We visited fishing clubs and camps that European tourists visit in the summer. Blake’s lodge needed to be something impressive.
We shot the film in three completely different regions, far from each other. It was like shooting a road movie because we had to keep changing locations. I wanted this landscape in this region, that lake in another, and a river elsewhere. We put these things together and pretended that it’s the same surroundings. I did the same thing in Genèse, but on a much smaller scale: the boarding school was shot in three different schools.
Shooting on location
It’s fantastic to shoot in real locations. We drove for probably 45 minutes every morning to get to the shooting sites from the fishing camp where we were staying. At 5 a.m. in the morning, we drove on these small dirt roads, and animals were crossing on the way to the set. We saw lynxes, bears, and bald eagles. It was an adventure just to get to the film set. We got there, and we could smell the fire from the fireplace in the house. It already gave us an atmosphere.
For me, the atmosphere is the film. The mood is more important than the story. I am marked by films where I have the fantasy to live in those films. What happens in the film is intense, but I wanted to create a universe where you would want to spend time. We needed to remove the “huis clos” [people trapped in a room] aspect of the story. I wanted to remove the theatre aspect through how we approached the camera movement, the setting, and the mood. I needed those moments where we go inside the house, they talk, and then, we go outside, and nature takes over.
How cinema differs from theatre
For me, cinema differs from theatre because you establish a frame. Within that frame, you define a certain kind of universe, which is limited by the frame. I want the actors to perform naturalistically. They can overlap each other. They don’t need to talk loudly. It’s a very different approach to acting from what I see in theatre.
7R: Your films often play with structure and who the focal characters are, which can shift. How did you approach the structure of the film Who by Fire (Comme le feu)?
Philippe Lesage: I’m still researching and exploring. I’m excited to bend the rules and take the audience where they’re not expecting. From what I’ve heard from people who have seen the film so far, there’s a tension in the film. You expect things to happen, but they don’t turn out the way you’d think they would. It was a challenge to trust the structure enough to move between Jeff and Aliocha, Jeff and Blake, Albert and Blake, and all these interactions within the group.
The main issues of the film are hidden in a way. It’s not about the ridiculous ego wars between two men. It’s more about who are these adults? What are they giving back to the youth?
I tried to be as free as possible with the structure. With Genèse, I was asked about structure a lot because of the big break at the end, where we start over with different characters. I was surprised by this reaction, but I can say now that one person out of two was a bit lost at the end of Genèse.
People got lost in Genèse because I was doing things you don’t usually see in films. You can end a novel with a poem, and nobody will question it. I read a lot of graphic novels, and I think they are much more free in terms of their approach to storytelling. It’s unbelievable how they can go from one story to another. In between the stories, they can have a story that has no connection with what you were reading. Then, they can return to the story, change characters, and change narrators. The best graphic novels that I have been reading do that. They have that freedom, and we accept it.
Avoiding traditional storytelling
In cinema, we are conservative. I don’t know why. Perhaps it’s because film is more expensive than drawing your little cartoon in your basement.
There’s a traditional way of telling a story that has almost become propaganda. People write about how to write a story: things you shouldn’t and should do. I’m not interested in those books and never have been. I’ve seen enough films in my life since I was a kid. I’m a cinephage. I watch a lot of stuff. I know enough to know the rules. Most people know the rules, too.
So I want that freedom to be surprised. I always want to make a film I want to see, and I enjoy it when a storyteller takes me by surprise completely. He doesn’t take me by the hand or explain everything. He doesn’t give me all the clues. Or she: I think women are sometimes making better films right now.
As a filmmaker, you don’t want to bore people. The film has a generous length. In the last fifteen minutes, you think the film might be about to end, but it doesn’t end. You also have a switch of the point of view. You begin with Jeff and slowly move to Aliocha’s point of view. Yeah. The film ends with her. That was very important. I have goosebumps when I say that. I liked that ending. We were looking at role models that failed. For me, she emerged as the film’s hope.
Avoiding toxic masculinity
Interrogating the toxic aspects of masculinity is at the centre of Les Démons (The Demons), Genèse (Genesis), and Comme le feu (Who by Fire). I’m not sure that the boys will fall into the trap. Aliocha keeps her dignity even though the men try to objectify her.
She finds refuge in literature and art. I believe film, literature, poetry, and art can still save our lives. The way she reacts when something bad happens, compared to the others, says a lot.
7R: There are many scenes in the film Who by Fire (Comme le feu) with minimal dialogue where we watch characters in silence. How did you approach those?
Philippe Lesage: Filming a character being silent is present in all my films. It’s a way of trying to access a character’s interior life. Moments where a character doesn’t speak, and you are patient and stay with them in silence, you get rewarded. You start to think you have access to this unlimited world of inner life. You project your own inner life in that. So that’s for me and I super important. I realized that recently because somebody wrote a part in a book about my films, and he wrote about that.
There are moments where the characters are completely alone or alone but surrounded by people. These moments allow the viewer to identify themselves or to project themselves into the characters or not.
We understand Jeff’s state of mind when he runs out of the house, because he just acted very thoughtlessly, and realized it. He’s filled with remorse and guilt, but then, when realizes he’s lost in the woods, fear takes over. Sometimes, I also like it when it’s not necessarily clear or obvious what they’re feeling or experiencing, but you can guess or you can feel it. For instance, when Aliocha sings that song at the end [John Grant’s I Wanna Go to Marz, which also features in Weekend (2011)], for me, it’s a relief. We can see that she’s been through a lot. There is some sort of catharsis when she sings that song, which is essentially just a long but beautiful grocery list.
Audience reactions
I really can’t wait to see the reaction from different viewers and if it will be as divisive as Genèse was for its ending. Even though, I have the impression that Genèse was, in general, well received, especially by film people and critics. But still, one out of two comments on Letterboxd is somebody who says, “What the fuck” about the ending of the film.
Hidden monsters in Philippe Lesage’s film Comme le feu (Who by Fire)
I like films where not everything is said, and that’s what I appreciate most about Comme le feu. In Les démons, the violence was completely out of frame. I was surprised that I wasn’t attacked for killing a child in the film. I think it’s because I didn’t show it. Sometimes, it’s necessary to show the banality of evil like it is in real life, which is what I was doing in Genèse. In this one, I wanted to be careful. I didn’t want to address violence in the same way again. It’s more hidden. It’s more passive. But there’s something dreadful in some of the characters.
I think there are always hidden monsters in my films. And that monster is always a man or society. These films are related and always come from my preoccupations and questions that I am interested in investigating. I want to understand the characters’ flaws more than to judge them. But it’s very hard not to judge, especially in our society right now. There’s not much place for nuance. I’m not interested in making portraits of good guys and bad guys, where we judge them throughout the whole film. But the question of evil is also present in my films. It’s a challenge to not divide the good guys from the bad guys when you’re also addressing the question of the evil in human nature.
But there’s also a lot of humour because the characters’ flaws are funny. It’s like watching an accident in slow motion. They’re so vain, but it’s human nature.
7R: How do you approach directing actors?
Philippe Lesage: I was looking for actors who are extremely good at ad-libs and improvisations.
In the film, the scenes have a structure. There are things that we need to do. But sometimes, the way we got there was surprising.
I always ask the actors to use their own words. I’m not protective of my texts. I want the dialogue to be transformed into the actors’ sensibility. When I was doing casting, we had these Zoom calls, and we would improvise. When I met Arieh Worthalter, who plays Blake, we did some scenes together. I played Albert, and we improvised together. I could immediately see that he was very good at improvisation. He is a very strong actor. And then, when I saw Paul Ahmarani, who plays Albert, and we improvised together in the same scenes, I realized that Paul was much better than I was at improvising. Of course. I never wanted to act in the film! At the first table read, we did the first dinner scene, and everyone was blown away by Arieh and Paul. We knew it was something special.
But these are incredibly creative actors. Of course, you can be an amazing actor without being completely at ease with improv. They’re all different.
There isn’t a recipe [for directing actors]. I’m always adapting myself towards who I’m working with. Some need directions, and others don’t need you to tell them anything. Sometimes, actors are very good, but they still need to be reassured. Some actors want you to give them more advice, and sometimes, that’s necessary. Some actors are like wild horses. You don’t even want to try to stop them. They’re fantastic and so surprising. Some are more method than others.
7R: What was the editing process like? I know you love editing and that you like to not over-cut. But the less you cut, the harder it is to edit. Every time you cut, you feel it, so you must be precise about it. Who by Fire (Comme le feu) is a long film with many long scenes and few cuts.
Philippe Lesage: I’m like a kid in a candy store during editing. It’s my favourite part of the process other than the writing. But it’s more exhilarating than the writing because the film is done. You realize, oh my god, this is probably going to work.
But it was challenging. We had to kill many darlings. When I shot the film, I told myself I wanted to do only long shots. And it was mostly long shots. Because when I got it, I got it. Why should I cut? The long takes are part of the film. I’m not sure everybody will like it. But it is what it is.
When you do that, you cannot save your ass by trying to shorten the scene. You can cut from the beginning or the end, which we did sometimes. But you need to remove big chunks. So that’s what we did. We removed a lot of scenes. Thank god we had 45 days of shooting because I had that luxury of playing with stuff. I completely rewrote the canoe sequence at the end. Fortunately, I could do it because the film was not working without it, but it needed to be simplified. Some of the most expensive parts of the film were cut out. My producer was not very happy when he saw the first edit. But he understood why I cut the bear or the helicopter.
Discovering the film in the edit
The film finds its own life. I realized the film was more like chamber music than a big symphony, as I had initially thought. It was about sacrificing stuff, which is where we struggle a bit. But it went smoothly. Because sometimes in editing, there are crises because sometimes it stops working. You want to kill yourself, and it’s terrible. But I don’t remember having felt that with Who by Fire.
There’s just surprising stuff. I clearly envisioned how I wanted to start the film with music and stuff. It didn’t work. We did something else because we had the material to do something else. We had other options. I think we could have started the film four different ways, just having this little car driving in the countryside in different locations, styles, and on different days — with and without sun. We had a ton of footage of that little car driving because that’s all we shot in the first two days. That’s a great luxury.
Questioning everything in the edit on Philippe Lesage’s film Who by Fire (Comme le feu)
We question everything. There’s not a scene there that wasn’t questioned. The magic aspect is when you look back at what you remove from the film, you think, thank god it was not in the film. I think most filmmakers feel this way. It’s like when you used to be able to watch deleted scenes on DVD extras, and you would see why they removed it. And you’d think, oh my god, it’s good that they removed that. You don’t see where it would have fit. It’s the same.
It’s a high risk because I don’t cover myself when I shoot. I covered myself a bit with the dinner scenes, but it would have been a mess to start cutting in that dinner scene. We had two days to shoot every dinner. It’s fantastic. We have two days to do one scene. There are many, many pages. Even on the set, I realized which takes were the good ones. And I told myself, I don’t know if I will do close-ups. I knew then that I would let it live by not moving the camera.
Philippe Lesage aims for simplicity in the film Who by Fire (Comme le feu)
I liked the second dinner scene because the camera moves slightly, but you don’t feel it. It goes to the centre of the table, pulls back, and goes around. It’s classy because we don’t realize it’s moving, but it is. That’s perfect. I’m not trying to show off, like, “Look, I’m doing something very impressive!” I think I was maybe more trying to show off on Les Démons sometimes with those long traveling shots. I’m not saying it’s a bad film. But when I look at it, I say, “Okay, I was very bold. Like, I’m doing cinema!!”
But in this one, it serves the story. I’m always looking for simplicity. I want to tell the scene most simply. Maybe I don’t like to cut because cutting makes me more insecure. Because then you would only know if the scene works once it’s in the edit. When I’m doing a long shot, I can go to sleep at night. I don’t sleep well during the shoot anyway. Maybe it’s because I have anxiety that I do long shots. I can still be content that we got the scene instead of finding out it doesn’t work two months later when we put the scene together in the edit. It would be terrible to discover we needed one more close-up, and not having it would ruin the whole scene. I’m sure this happens to many people. It’s challenging to do long shots, but it’s great fun when it’s working.
7R: What are you working on next?
Philippe Lesage: I’m working on a follow-up to Genèse, called My Uncle. We are back with the same characters — probably, hopefully, the same actors — who are now in their 20s.There will be new actors, as well, because there are some new characters. It’s a bit like Genèse where some of the characters from Les Démons returned, but there were many new ones that are important to me. There is a family who have their kids over for summer vacation by the ocean. But it’s very different from Comme le feu.
My Uncle is ready to shoot this summer, hopefully. I have a great cast. I will know in April if it’s been greenlighted. If it’s not this summer, then it will be next summer.
I’m going to also have a newborn this summer. I think I can manage both. I feel like it’s been ages between Genèse and this one, and I like to do films every year. My Uncle has a lower budget than Who by Fire because I want to do it faster, faster. The more money you ask for, the longer it takes to finance.
Developing a musical
I’m also developing a musical that I hope to shoot in Copenhagen because I have a history with Copenhagen. I did my first feature film in Copenhagen with no money. I just finished the script in December. I’m using existing music by known artists — not music that everybody knows, but great pearls, like John Grant [whose song features in Who by Fire]. It’s a funny film, a kind of satire about people in their twenties, thirties, and forties struggling with love, heartache, and their life aspirations and ambitions. I need to figure out what we are going to do production-wise for this film.I have a specific cast in my mind.
It was hard to finance Who by Fire, too. But I didn’t give up. We waited almost four years for this one. We scouted for two years and cast for two years. It was a long process. We had to apply for funding many times. I don’t give up on projects that easily. I don’t know how I will get them done or how long it’s going to take, but I will do it. That’s what I’m telling myself. So far so good. Knock on wood. I really, really want to make those two films.
Related reading/listening to Philippe Lesage’s Berlinale film Comme le feu (Who by Fire)
More Philippe Lesage: Read our interview with Philippe Lesage on Les démons (The Demons) (2015) and our interview with him on Genèse (Genesis) (2018). Read our in-depth look at Genèse in The 2019 Canadian Cinema Yearbook. The book includes an interview with Lesage, an interview with his editor, and an in-depth analysis of the film’s central performance by Théodore Pellerin. Our interview with Philippe Lesage on Comme le feu (Who by Fire) builds on our discussions with him about his earlier films.
More highlights from the Berlinale’s Generation section: Read our interviews with the filmmakers behind Ninjababy (2021), Stop-Zemlia (2021), and Nelly Rapp: Monster Agent (2021). Also, read our reviews of Summer Blur (2021), and Supa Modo (2018).
More from Berlinale 2024: Read all of our Berlinale coverage.
