Bruno (Sebastian Rojano) is a young pyromaniac struggling with fitting into the confines of society. When he one day leaves home to be with a girl that he met online, she will force him to face his father’s death and his own sexuality. All the Fires that he has started will soon come back to haunt him.
Dark is the best way to describe All the Fires. Almost the entirety of the film is aesthetically dark, and some parts are even difficult to see. With that, however, Writer-Director Mauricio Calderón Rico has the opportunity to use fire to create juxtaposition and balance. The darkness is very much representative of the life that Bruno leads, of the struggles that he faces on a daily basis–and those fires are his only opportunity to take control of his life. While viewers understand that the choices he makes aren’t the best, that they will ultimately lead to nothing but death and destruction, we are also afforded the opportunity to understand why these fires make Bruno feel the way that they do.
Beyond this aspect of All the Fires, however, I’m not sure how much this film really interested me. I’m beyond the part of my life in which I have those juvenile compulsions (at least I think so), and I’m not sure that All the Fires does enough to extend itself to viewers existing in other places. The film feels hyper focused on a younger audience, even with its sometimes more mature content. Viewers see and hear about the impulses of a teenage boy, and while that’s not the entire film–it’s a massive part of it.
All the Fires has the potential to be hard hitting if it can incorporate the points of view of some of the more mature characters in the film–but it doesn’t accomplish that. I certainly understand that Bruno is the focus of this film, but I’m not sure that it does enough (outside of that aforementioned juxtaposition of light) to appeal to a wider audience. I think I needed more in this regard, something to help me connect better with All the Fires. Had there been more focus on this, I believe the film would have the potential to have great success.
Written & Directed by Mauricio Calderón Rico.
Starring Sebástian Rojano, Natalia Quiroz, Ari López, Héctor Illanes, Hannah Romen, etc.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐/10
댓글