Residing somewhere between fiction and documentary, the film shows firefighters practising their skills on a tall purpose built house in a fire station. This is depicted as if it were a piece of theatre, a rehearsal or ritual in a theatre where only one play is performed. There are different levels of fiction. A script is performed by actors playing firefighters; lines are swapped, dramatically forgotten and a scene arrives early. The fake lives which are saved in the practice represent aspects of the psyche. The dichotomy of fake and real which is invoked refers to the self or psyche as if a fake self is being sustained. The house is unlived-in, sinister, the piece reminiscent of a psyche where trauma and desire are endlessly replayed.
—Susan Thomson