60
Audacious, yet sensitive, Fire may shock traditionalists but is the sort of film that ought to win Indian cinema a whole new audience.
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What are critics saying?
88
ReelViews by James Berardinelli
Mehta has created a pair of memorable characters who are easy to empathize with, and who gratifyingly are never transformed from flesh-and-blood individuals into mere symbols.
50
Fire is designed to provoke questions and spark debate. Mission accomplished, but, despite a heartfelt tone that pervades its every moment, it doesn't do much else.
70
The New York Times by Lawrence Van Gelder
Written and directed by Deepa Mehta, this glossy melodrama, mixing references to Indian mysticism and the epic poetry of the "Ramayana" with late-20th-century feminism, teeters unsteadily between sociology and soap opera.
80
Chicago Reader by Lisa Alspector
Writer-director Deepa Mehta fuses the soap-opera elements of her plot -- which reveals one sexual secret after another of the variously betrayed, selfish, and self-actualizing members of the two couples' New Delhi household--into profound drama.
67
Austin Chronicle by Marjorie Baumgarten
For a film with such volatile subject matter, the performances are subdued and naturalistic. Fire burns with a rare flame.
75
San Francisco Chronicle by Peter Stack
The richness of characters make this movie shine. It's just that, somehow, a certain sense of fire is missing.
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto) by Rick Groen
The film lacks flow, unfolding in a rat-a-tat series of short, artfully lensed scenes -- individually nice but collectively jerky.
75
Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert
The two women are very beautiful, gentle and sad together, and the movie is all but stolen by Chowdhry, as the servant who lurks constantly in the background providing, with his very body language, a comic running commentary.
50
San Francisco Examiner by Walter Addiego
The title comes from Indian legend in which Lord Rama tests the purity of his wife by a flaming ordeal (which we see enacted in an open-air pageant with comic overtones of Bunuel). This bit of mythology too handily prefigures a major element in the film's conclusion.