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Fire
Metascore
64 out of 100

Generally favorable reviews - based on 14 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 9 out of 14
  2. Mixed: 5 out of 14
  3. Negative: 0 out of 14
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  1. ReelViews
    Reviewed by: James Berardinelli
    88
    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.
  2. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: Staff (Not credited)
    80
    In filmmaker Mehta's deft hands, the outcome is handled with power and sensitivity. [22 Aug1 997, pg.N40]
    All this publication's reviews
  3. Chicago Reader
    Reviewed by: Lisa Alspector
    80
    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.
  4. Chicago Sun-Times
    Reviewed by: Roger Ebert
    75
    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.
  5. San Francisco Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Peter Stack
    75
    The richness of characters make this movie shine. It's just that, somehow, a certain sense of fire is missing.
  6. The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
    Reviewed by: Rick Groen
    75
    The film lacks flow, unfolding in a rat-a-tat series of short, artfully lensed scenes -- individually nice but collectively jerky.
  7. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: Lawrence Van Gelder
    70
    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.
  8. Austin Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Marjorie Baumgarten
    67
    For a film with such volatile subject matter, the performances are subdued and naturalistic. Fire burns with a rare flame.
  9. Entertainment Weekly
    Reviewed by: Owen Gleiberman
    67
    As a director, Mehta would do well to stop smothering her empathy in glibness (she uses the family's ancient mute grandmother as a sitcom prank), but her empathy pokes through nonetheless.
  10. Empire
    Reviewed by: David Parkinson
    60
    Audacious, yet sensitive, Fire may shock traditionalists but is the sort of film that ought to win Indian cinema a whole new audience.
  11. San Francisco Examiner
    Reviewed by: Walter Addiego
    50
    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.
  12. Christian Science Monitor
    Reviewed by: David Sterritt
    50
    Written and directed by Deepa Mehta, this Indian production is not filmed very interestingly, but reveals much about conflicts between traditional and modern attitudes in Indian society.
  13. The A.V. Club
    Reviewed by: Keith Phipps
    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.
  14. Variety
    Reviewed by: Brendan Kelly
    40
    The third feature from this Indian-born writer-director... is an underwhelming effort that adds little new to the debate over arranged marriages and fails to ignite much interest in the problems faced by two frustrated New Delhi wives.
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