The new documentary Fire of Love is literally about a ride-or-die couple. Oh sure, we all know those couples who are joined at the hip and all, “We’ll do anything for each other.” Well, ask yourself this, wannabe Steve and Eydie: If your mate puts on a flame-retardant outfit and walks straight into hot lava, would you follow them?
That’s what Maurice and Katia Krafft did on a regular basis. The Alsatian French couple were intrepid volcanologists, traveling the world and getting up close and personal with those ruptures in the Earth’s crust that shoot out lava, ash and a whole lotta hot shit. The pair made a comfortable living off of it, creating books and their own documentary films about their discoveries. But it all came to an end in June 1991, when the Kraffts were killed near Japan’s Mount Unzen during a pyroclastic flow — a type of explosive eruption. And from the way Fire tells it via the footage the Kraffts accumulated throughout the years, they probably wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.
The two were obsessed with volcanoes even before they met. They each made life-changing visits to Italian volcanoes — Katia at Mount Etna, Maurice at Mount Stromboli — when they were young. Although the details of how they first met is up for debate (Was it a first date? A chance meeting?), they of course bonded over shared interests. Children of post-World War II France, they grew up to be anti-war activists, appearing on the front page of daily newspaper L’Humanité during a highly attended demonstration.
Fire of Love shows the couple beginning their travels as volcano-studying man and wife in the late ’60s, often driving in a jalopy that breaks down constantly. They even start to build a traveling commune — named Team Vulcan — as people join them on their excursions. All the while, they document everything on camera, from the nifty highs to the painful lows. (People who don’t like watching burned skin fall off a leg might wanna skip this one.) At first, their volcano studies seem like a very intense hobby. But as they grow older and see how the effects of a volcanic eruption can destroy whole communities, they work to alert people about what they need to do before and after a volcano blows.
Fire is one of two documentaries about the Kraffts dropping this year. (Werner Herzog, no stranger to doing docs on people obsessed with nature, will release The Fire Within: A Requiem for Katia and Maurice Krafft sometime in the future.) For this one, director Sara Dosa weaves a poignantly told, true-life love story about two people who practically made an art of flying too close to the sun. Quirkilicious filmmaker Miranda July provides wistful narration, deconstructing the Kraffts’ union with such lines as: “As in love, there are mysteries. You fall hard for what you know — harder for what you don’t.” The Kraffts themselves are more blunt when they talk about their relationship. “It’s hard for volcanologists to live together — it’s volcanic!” Maurice says at one point.
Fire shows how these two ruled out living a conventional domestic existence (kids, pets, white picket fence, etc.) in order to become magma-chasing nomads. But — and I hate to admit something so cheesy — it also makes you believe in love. It reminds me of a line Steve Martin delivers at the end of his 1991 film L.A. Story: “There’s someone out there for everyone — even if you need a pickax, a compass and night goggles to find them.” While it’s very likely they had those items before they met, Maurice and Katia didn’t need them to find one another — and once they did, they embarked on a years-spanning love affair with volcanoes and each other, right until the very end.
A movie about people who figuratively and literally burn for each other (you hear that, Bridgerton fans?), Fire of Love is a nonfiction rarity: a documentary that can also serve as one romantic-ass date movie.
