Digging for Fire

Aug 28 - Sep 03, 2015

(Joe Swanberg, 2015, United States, DCP, 85 min)

Seattle premiere

The latest film from prolific independent director Joe Swanberg (Drinking Buddies, Happy Christmas, V/H/S) follows a married couple caught in the havoc of raising a small child. Tim (Jake Johnson) and Lee (Rosemarie DeWitt) take a break from each other to gain some breathing room: Lee takes their son to visit her family while Tim stays back to reminisce with old friends. Lee, disappointed in the stagnancy of her life with Tim, quickly begins to question the life waiting for her at home, while Tim finds his curiosity piqued by an old bone and antique gun he discovers in the yard. Thanks to the prodding of his wild companions, he becomes convinced that with a little digging, they could unearth the rest of the mystery. Both husband and wife find themselves trapped in a web of temptation and impulse as each try to stay true to the type of people they believe themselves to be.

 
With a knockout cast including Sam Rockwell, Orlando Bloom, Anna Kendrick, and Sam Elliot, Digging for Fire is another entry in Swanberg's growing body of work that entangles intimate drama and comedy, with some mystery thrown in for good measure: each new character acts as another catalyst for conflict. The film offers  “an ever-shifting emotional miasma that's simultaneously scary, funny, and sexy”, playing with the dangers of possibility, and Swanberg pulls each string with just enough delicacy to tantalize and fascinate.
 
“Digging for Fire abounds in the poetry of things almost but not quite happening. It's about chaos knocking forever on the door of insidious nuclear-familial bliss.” –Chuck Bowen, Slant Magazine
 
“Moody and mysterious…entrancing in the moment and then fleeting in the next.” –Rodrigo Perez, Indiewire

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