‘Fire of Love’ Documents a Couple’s Fascination With Volcanoes, Film, and Each Other
They are Maurice and Katia Krafft, husband-and-wife volcanologists, and with the quixotic joie de vivre of Wes Anderson protagonists they spent 20 years obsessively,
almost neurotically, getting as close as possible to the fearsome majesty and bubbling mystery of active volcanoes.
The Kraffts are the subject of Sara Dosa's documentary Fire of Love, a Sundance hit that arrives in theaters this week before finding a home on Disney+ later this year.
The footage the Kraffts shot throughout their career — starting in the spring of 1971 with the eruption of Italy's Stromboli volcano and
lasting until the summer of 1991, when the French couple was part of a group killed by an eruption at Japan's Mount Unzen
Mount Unzen — is breathtaking, beyond imagination, and scientifically significant.
Dosa uses it imagistically, in part to convey their own love story.
After they meet as students over coffee (the only footage in the film not shot by the couple) their ignited ardor is announced
in voiceover from filmmaker-actor-artist Miranda July and illustrated by stunning footage of an avalanche caused by a pyroclastic flow.