Pierre Menahem | Le feu au lac (Fire at the Lake) / 2022

asking us to sit as judge

by Douglas Messerli

 

Pierre Menahem (screenwriter and director) Le feu au lac (Fire at the Lake) / 2022 [15 minutes]

 

Cow herder Félix (Hervé Lassïnce) works in paradise, watching his cows daily in the nearby mountains, while his mother Rose (Isabelle Rama) in a small house near a pristine lake in the  Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, does the laundry and cooking. We don’t know if Félix spends several days at a time in the mountains or returns home at night, but his is surely a lonely life.

     It is presumably just as lonely for his elderly mother, who works hard for someone of her age. On this particular day, in fact, she passes out, apparently having a heart attack, with only time to find her way to her bed. When Félix returns, he finds a pot of water whistling and his mother apparently dead in her bed. He pulls the curtain and sits down to ponder the situation.

     But he soon receives a call on his dating app, and in the next frame we see him driving toward the village where, at another farm, he meets up with a young man, Mathieu (Pierre Moure) who he has brought a bottle of wine.

     Mathieu brings out the glasses and apologizes for the direct and unsubtle cellphone message, suggesting he never knows how to respond to such things. Mathieu’s family, he bemoans, are all intellectuals and never drink. When asked if he lives here, Mathieu responds that he lives in Grenoble, where he was a teacher completing a degree in botany.

      For his part, Félix explains his business is cows, now up in the pasture. He doesn’t raise the animals for cheese any more but raises them in the grassy highlands for their meat.

      Mathieu admits that Félix is his first hook-up since he’s been home. There is no other opportunity with his family around. Clearly, if Félix is lonely, so is Mathieu bored and sexually frustrated. In front of the family’s roaring fire place, they have raw and lusty sex.

      Meanwhile, in an intercut, we observe Félix’s mother awakening, rising from the bed, and going over to the window and opening it. She lets the breeze chill her and she looks up to mountains.

      Félix rises from the bed on which the exhausted revelers have been resting. He strokes the sleeping boy’s hair and, much like his mother, goes to the window and looks up at the snow-packed mountains.

      Back at home, finding his mother back in her bed, he pulls a cover over her and calls the doctor, explaining that his mother Rose “is gone.” Near her bed, we notice a bunch of narcissi sitting in a vase, just what Félix first observed at Mathieu’s house. Félix sits down on a chair, tears rolling down his eyes, to wait.

      In the very next frame, however, we see him swimming far out into the cold lake. At one point he appears to turn back, but moves instead into what appears as a floating position. The camera focuses on what appears to be his head for a long while before going dark.

      The major issue of this film, clearly, is what to make of Félix’s actions, his seeming unfeeling response to his mother’s death or perhaps just a wave of illness from which she might have been saved, and his choice instead to fulfill his own sexual desires. Is Félix, himself, a kind of narcissus? Pierre Menahem’s film, accordingly, almost challenges its audience to stand in judgment, given the character he portrays, encouraging us to look into ourselves with empathy and determine which choice we should have made.

      The movie, in short, almost challenges us to continue that judgment into our interruption of the film’s last scene as either a death or a cleansing reinvigoration.

      There is no correct answer, of course. One could comment endlessly about several possible reasons for Félix’s choices or speak out in criticism of what appear to be selfish acts. And whatever I might say will clearly not change other viewer’s minds.

      Nonetheless, I feel compelled to speak—just as others are encouraged to do.

      In our popular culture the narcissus, commonly known as a daffodil, has become a symbol of self-love, of an individual so wrapped up in himself that he drowns in attempting to kiss his own image. Accordingly, as I have explained in numerous essays, the narcissus is associated naturally with same-gender sex, and indeed the myth of narcissus has been appropriated by everyone from psychiatrists to poets and writers as an image of homosexuality. It is fitting that both of the gay men are connected with the flower here, Mathieu admitting to have cut the wildflowers (something not approved of in French and Swiss cultures) for his vase, and later Félix for having brought home that vase or another filled with the same flower.

      After all, he has chosen his own sexual desires over his mother’s well-being, hasn’t he?

      I might argue, however, that in such rural cultures with long distances between, one does not call up doctor to expect him to immediately come to the rescue. And it seems apparent that Félix has believed his mother to have died, despite the wrinkle that French director Pierre Menahem has introduced, perhaps just to confound us. Farmers, particularly those who gently raise their animals for slaughter, work regularly with issues of life and death. My parents, both of whom grew up on farms could not bear that fact that my sister and I loved to have pets. In their childhood homes the dog and cat served a purpose, the dog for protection and security and the cat as a ratter. They were not allowed to name the animals, most of which would soon be sold or slaughtered at home.

       So are Félix and Rose well aware of their limited lifespans. It’s a hard life, and when the time comes for death, you simply lay down and die. There is place for hours of grieving. Even when she momentarily rises, still living, Rose appears to invite in the cold winds to embrace her, perhaps to reinvigorate herself or maybe just to ensure that death steals her away more quickly in her son’s absence.

       In this world of lonely self-survival, pleasure—despite the beauty about them—is a rare commodity. For an isolated farmer who also happens to be gay, one can be certain that any sexual possibilities that arise, even with Grindr and other contemporary dating apps, is extremely rare. The very idea that a young, handsome boy nearby is suddenly available and reaching out to have sex is something that one cannot simply ignore. What has happened is over, and in such a world in which Félix lives, one must grab any opportunity for joy. Even the city boy, Mathieu has reached out in some desperation, seeking a moment apart from family restrictions. And by the brief look of their almost desperate hugs and sexual maneuvers, we can perceive both of these men as being quite in need of sexual relief.

       Félix has simply prioritized his duties for survival. Although his mother has died, he must still go on living, and in order live he must find some meaning in his life, however momentary and temporal. Upon achieving that goal, he becomes the dutiful son.

       For some that last swim will surely wreak of guilt, an attempt to redeem himself through a kind of suicidal act.

       But living where he does, we must recognize Félix (the embodiment of happiness) must well know how to swim and the limitations to his abilities. For me he has gone out as far as he can, and is now emptying his thoughts, cooling down his repressed emotions, and regaining composure before we swims back to meet with the doctor.

       In another myth, as Pluto, the god of death, raped Prosperina, carrying her into the underworld, she dropped the white lilies she was picking; they turned to yellow daffodils reminding us of the Spring when Pluto had agreed with Jupiter to free his bride for a half year when she could return to earth.

       After a long winter, Félix has returned the cows to pasture, and summer will soon be here along with the new life and memories his sexual encounter has brought him. His swim is not a sign of death, in my thinking, but of that new life now purified.

       But in the end, it doesn’t matter what I think or what others do. That is the wonder of narrative cinema; the characters act, sometimes quite strangely, out of their own motivations, without being able to know or care about ours.

 

Los Angeles, September 2, 2023

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (January 2024).