Both Sides of the Blade

"A seductively indirect love triangle, a drama of the mind as much as the heart. It’s intriguing if contrived and anticlimactic, though acted at the highest pitch of sensual conviction."

"The film has an impetuous, let’s-try-it-on quality that makes it a modest pleasure."

"A rich, nuanced exploration of female desire from the fault lines of an ostensibly simple narrative."

"The sense of love dissolving and lives thrown into chaos as a dormant past violently breaks through the surface is unexpectedly moving, all the more so because of the film’s rigorous rejection of sentimentality."

"The silences that overwhelm the movie’s confrontational rages and the suppression of backstory details, underplaying motives and emphasizing action, thrust “Fire” out of the realm of psychological drama and into shocking emotional immediacy."

"As is often the case with Denis’ films, Fire grows more illuminating as it gets hotter..."

"The studied ambiguity of what’s going on in Fire doesn’t keep it from often achieving the suspense of an accomplished erotic thriller."