80
Like the inferno it depicts, Laxe’s film casts an entrancing spell.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
100
CineVue by Christopher Machell
Fire Will Come is of an enigmatic and poetic cinema, borne of fierce, barely-contained vision.
67
Rugged, elemental, and restrained to a degree that suggests its director finds poetry in even the simplest things (his camera lingers on rolling fog or the face of a farm animal with a reverence that might prove trying for those not on his wavelength), “Fire Will Come” is a slight but evocative meditation on making peace with something that isn’t possible to understand nor extinguish.
75
Slant Magazine by Diego Semerene
The film is much more in synchrony with the haziness of its imagery when it preserves the awkwardness between characters, the impossibility for anything other than life’s basic staples to be exchanged.
70
The New York Times by Glenn Kenny
Fire Will Come practically becomes a documentary, and a devastating one at that.
70
You know exactly what climax is coming in Oliver Laxe’s rustically beautiful rural parable, but its dreamy, mesmeric power lies in the waiting.
67
The A.V. Club by Ignatiy Vishnevetsky
Quiet, slow-moving, ambiguous character studies might be a dime a dozen on the festival circuit, but there are few that remind us that there are things out there that still feel as big as myth.
60
The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw
I find myself admiring his visual and compositional sense, while being a bit exasperated by the provisional and coyly non-committal nature of his storytelling.
50
RogerEbert.com by Simon Abrams
That opening scene is also, in retrospect, somewhat depressing for the way that it conflates a glib fatalism with an unbelievable sort of turn-the-other-cheek optimism ("If they hurt others, it's because they hurt, too,” as Benedicta says in one scene).
80
The Observer (UK) by Simran Hans
Laxe has a masterly command of rhythm and pacing. The action feels unhurried, despite the film’s tight running time, and there is a spaciousness to the world-building; attentive sound design and 16mm photography capture Galicia’s damp, green allure.