“Fire” begins in water: a wide, rippling expanse of Mediterranean blue under a cloudless sky, displaced and disrupted by two whirling human bodies. Sara (Juliette Binoche) and Jean (Vincent Lindon) tussle in the otherwise empty ocean as though they’ve just discovered weightlessness, while Eric Gautier’s camera lingers on skin touching skin under the shimmer. The lovers are, we guess, on vacation, though in this immediately seductive opening scene, they seem suspended in another ecstatic reality altogether.
It’s no spoiler to say we’ll never see them like this again in Claire Denis’ frank, hot-blooded relationship drama; most relationships only have select moments of such removed bliss, after all. But we frequently grieve for this sunlit simplicity in the messy, emotionally fraught and very Parisian pileup of desires, regrets and jealousies that follows. “Fire”…
