La fidélité

La Fidelité (2000)

Andrzej Zulawski has an obsession : Passion for understand love and how feeling could affect everything beyond reason. Clélia (Sophie Marceau), is a very attractive photographer that start a new job in a sensationalistic newspaper. This is the gate in which she is going to know three men : Cléve ( Pascal Geggory) a middle age books editor, that will become her husband ; Nemo (Gillaume Canet) also a photographer with a very intriguing life; and the owner of the broadcasting and tabloid company, Rupert McRoi ( Michel Subor), that by the way could be her real Dad. But Fidelity isn't a soap opera, and thing are more complicated in Zulawski's movies. . The Fidelity, is about different things: principles and fidelity, beyond passion, and how a bisexual husband do not believe the sincerity of his wife. Is also about the paparazzi's underworld, and how our life is directed by our feelings.

This subject was the them of Possession (1981), in which other lovely woman, Isabelle Adjani, is trapped between the tentacles of a "Thing", that could be the irrationality of passions. La Fidelité is full of different characters, that are interconnected with the invisible net of feeling and passion. The young girl enters in a few time in a chaotic experiences as well as the hypocrisy of some of the people that surround her and the photography became a tool for to understand, by the way, the film is also full of gorgeous photos and a blink to Andy Warhol, which picture is showed somewhere in the film.

Intriguing that Sophie Marceau should make a film about fidelity under the direction of Zulawski (" Crazy love* "), her companion for more than fifteen years. But this is just one aspect of a baroque and flamboyant film which evokes the gutter press and organ trafficking to bring up to date a literary classic, "The princess of Cleves ". Torn between her oath not to deceive her husband and her desire for a suicidal young photographer, Sophie Marceau finds herself in one of her best roles.

* with Sophie Marceau, Francis Huster and Tcheky Karyo.

Billed as a highlight of this year's Martell French Film tour of the UK, Fidelity runs for slightly over three hours. But despite its length, it tackles far too much. I could list off a dozen themes from it but it's hard enough making this readable. I liked Sophie Marceau and Pascal Greggory but characterisation is not a strong point of this film.

La Fidélité's ambitions, some of its subject matter, and the fact that it's three hours long, are a bit like another recent French film, Pola X. That film was even more over the top and over-reaching. Also, it didn't have Sophie Marceau, and it was, frankly, mad. So arguably Pola X was a worse flop than this film, but it had visual imagination. Which went a long way, and left me feeling less conned than I did after three hours of this.

Another film based upon ' La Princesse de Cleves ' ( the version by Christophe Honore is the best ) and it is one of the more watchable of Zulawski's output. Sophie Marceau gives a decent performance but no more than that, and the other actors who stand out are Edith Scob and the incredibly good Magali Noel. For those who do not know them look them up!! The male actors are passable so really the full weight of the film depends more or less on the direction. I cannot say I am a great fan of Zulawski and despite the so-called sexual frankness of his films I still feel a clinging odour of Catholic belief or non-belief in his films. Good is good etc and bad is bad and the monster of sexuality in his most known work ' Possession ' gets brief showings here. I want to avoid spoilers but I did not believe in her relationship with her husband played by Pascal Greggory and nothing conveyed a real passion between them. Greggory can be very capable as an actor, but not here. Overall it is a superficial film and despite Zulawski's attempts at profundity I have repeatedly seen him fail. The worst example was the woefully bad ' L'amour Braque ' based again loosely on another literary source Dostoyevsky's ' The Idiot '. Not a good film, but neither is it unwatchable. Despite outcries from one reviewer I did not see one penis, and the sexuality in the film was well below zero in temperature.

Aesthetic, as the Youth would say. But also useless and campy but not necessarily in the good way.