Jack Hanson at Commonweal:
Petzold has said in interviews that, when he contracted Covid in 2020, he spent weeks watching the films of Eric Rohmer, a French director whose films tell deceptively simple stories, almost fables, and Afire follows this model. The first two acts of the film are essentially a dark comedy of manners: Devid and Felix sleep together, Leon makes fumbling attempts to win Nadja’s affections while offending her and embarrassing himself at every turn. Wildfires are raging in a nearby forest, but our vacationers assure one another that, due to prevailing wind patterns, they are safe from the ongoing devastation—a presumption begging to be challenged.
Some reviewers have questioned whether, when the reckoning arrives for the naïve Leon and his slightly less naïve companions, Petzold executes it with the same narrative eloquence for which he is known. But the primary question Afire asks is not what the characters will do when the fire finally comes, but rather how they will come to terms with the fact that, at some level, they always knew it was coming.
more here.