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A14 PEOPLE & ARTS
Wednesday 6 July 2022
Review: In ‘Fire of Love,’ the mysterious alchemy of romance

By JAKE COYLE lion questions. Maurice, a
AP Film Writer gregarious geologist, and
Rarely have the conditions Katia, a more reserved
for love been less hospi- geochemist, were brought
table than in Sara Dosa's together by their mutual in-
documentary "Fire of Love." fatuation for volcanoes. Af-
Yet here, amid shifting tec- ter marrying, they decided
tonics and quaking craters, not to have children and
French volcanologists Katia instead dedicated them-
and Maurice Krafft forge a selves to being, as Maurice
strangely rock-steady ro- terms it, "volcano runners."
mance. "Fire of Love," ex- They travel from active vol-
cavates their unique story, cano to active volcano,
and the jaw-dropping foot- living according to the
age the Kraffts left behind, Earth's rhythms. With a wry
in a film exploding with awe smile, they confess many of
for the mysterious alche- their colleagues view them
mies of love and obsession. as weirdos. "If I could eat
The Kraffts were prominent rocks, I'd stay on the volca- This image released by National Geographic shows Katia Krafft wearing an aluminized suit as she
scientists in the '70s and no and never come down," stands near lava burst at Krafla Volcano, Iceland, in a scene from the documentary "Fire of Love."
'80s whose passion and Maurice says proudly in Associated Press
occasional red knit hats one TV interview. fiction film or something left "Fire of Love" is principally a intoxicated by forces far
made them a bit like the Dosa uses July's narration to over from the henchmen of love story, the chemistry we larger than they are. Katia
Cousteaus of the volcano frame the Kraffts' story with a Bond villain. But with riv- see between them isn't the and Maurice are, she says,
world. Like that underwa- a playful sense of wonder ers of red all around, they sort that makes you swoon. "like flies in a saucepan
ter explorer, the Kraffts also and whimsy — a sometimes are almost at play — wild It's easy to wonder if what that's boiling over." And it's
picked up filmmaking to overly intrusive, too neatly silhouettes dancing on the binds them together isn't their contagious sense of
chronicle their investiga- packaged device in a film precipice. When set to Bri- so much love as mutual awe for nature that keeps
tions — which often drew where what's on screen is an Eno's beguiling "The Big obsession. They both burn the flames of "Fire of Love"
them, like moths to the so overwhelmingly power- Ship," the imagery isn't hell- with a red-hot desire less smoldering.
flame, perilously close to ful that it might not need ish but heavenly. for each other than to be "Fire of Love," a Neon re-
not-at-all-dormant volca- the extra layer. On one volcano, Maurice as close to the volcano as lease, is rated PG by the
noes. They died in 1991 in Again and again, we fries an egg on the hot possible. Are they chasing Motion Picture Association
a cascading gray cloud see the couple traversing ground. On another, he life, or death? Maurice calls of America for thematic
on Japan's Mount Unzen, charred alien landscapes paddles an inflatable raft it "a kamikaze existence." material including some
leaving behind hundreds with geysers of spewing over a steaming lake of But what's unknowable is unsettling images, and brief
of hours of footage, and lava. Their protective out- acid. Katia objects to that also at the heart of "Fire smoking. Running time: 93
as narrator Miranda July fits are a little nutty, too, like gambit but they are reso- of Love," a movie about minutes. Three stars out of
says early in the film, a mil- props from an old science- lutely inseparable. Still, if two people not afraid but four.q

Review: An Irish hitman juggles murder with parenthood

By BRUCE DESILVA chopath, he discovers an infant in O'Neil's filthy
Associated Press drug den, can't bear to leave it there, and
Patrick Callen, a Dublin, Ireland hitman with a takes it with him.
mild case of obsessive-compulsive disorder, Suddenly, the antihero of "The Lemon Man" is
stays organized by making lists. On his first day struggling to change diapers and trying to fig-
in Keith Bruton's debut novel, the list includes: ure out what toddlers eat. But he's also got a
— Buy Food job to do. There are people who need killing
— Sleep With Olivia and others willing to pay to have it done. So he
— Visit Ma finds himself taking the baby along on the job
— Kill Henry O'Neil or leaving him in the care of his equally flum-
Patrick, who navigates Dublin's streets on his moxed girlfriend, Olivia, whose work as a prosti-
1950s Modello Oro bicycle, was pedaling home tute doesn't bother Patrick in the least.
from the market when he stopped off to deal Caring for an infant while working as a hired kill-
with O'Neil, a drug runner and junkie who owed er is not a good mix, and the inevitable compli-
his supplier more than he could pay. Worried cations soon threaten to get Patrick and Olivia
that someone might "nick" his bag of lemons, killed. The result is a fast-paced crime novel that
Patrick slipped it off the handlebars and took is both hilarious and hardboiled, its main char-
it with him to do the hit. From then on, he was acter both ruthless and oddly sympathetic.
known as The Lemon Man. "I don't care what you think," Patrick says. "I take
The details of the O'Neil hit precisely convey care of (i.e. kill) people when they don't obey
Patrick's attitude about his chosen profession. the rules. The rules of the street."
"I reach back into my shorts and pull out the Bruton's tight, colorful prose captures the idio-
gun, shooting little Henry O'Neil dead center in syncrasies of Irish English without ever leaving
the forehead, bulls-eye. He falls back into the American readers behind, every unfamiliar
chair with a bullet in his head. I touch my top word clear in contest. And his hard-eyed por-
lip with the top of my tongue. My moustache trayal of Dublin street life is so vivid readers can
is getting long... I scratch my head with the si- This cover image released by Brash Books shows "The smell the streets and feel the cold rain on their
lencer. It's warm." Lemon Man" by Keith Bruton. faces.q
But just when you're sure that Patrick is a psy- Associated Press