Fidelity

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.

I like French cinema and Sophie Marceau in particular, so i was expecting great things of this film, but i have to say i was disappointed. It's not awful, but it's not great either - the first half of the film is pretty poor, but it redeems itself to some degree in the latter stages.

After the first half hour i thought i had paid to see a soft-porn flick, such was the lack of plot, direction and character. Not a lot happens to begin with except Marceau s****ing every bloke who glances her way, plus the occasional scene with her infirm mother - a broken woman who chose duty over love in her choice of husband. The film then progresses to chart Marceau's path along the duty vs. love road, although it does so in a very contrived way.

The characters are fairly one-dimensional, and it's not until the last hour or so that there is any real emotion to the film. By this time the director seems to have lost the plot, and the film changes tone very noticeably (think: From Dusk 'til Dawn - ok maybe not that bad, but bad enough). One minute it's a drama, then it's an action flick. Then back to drama again, and very disjointed it is too. It finally ends back in the drama fold, and does at least ask a few questions about the theme of the film, Fidelity, but for a film that's 3 hours long they're not very deep and not very well portrayed, and i left the cinema thinking: "what a missed opportunity!". Disappointing.

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.

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

Zulawski's 'La Fidélité' is one imbalanced film. The plot is very contrived. It tries to tackle too many things at once but does not quite succeed in spite of the almost 3 hour length. The characters lack dimension (and are hardly interesting). I was irritated by the explicit male nudity (which was more than female nudity). The sex scenes looked unconvincing and a little vulgar, as if they were just thrown in the movie randomly, giving it a pretentious look. The story lacks a distinct direction. Yet, somehow, something about it kept me watching till the end and after the closing credits have rolled, I didn't feel disappointed (by the fact that I spent three hours watching the film) nor was I particularly satisfied. By no means, is this a great film but it is shot quite beautifully. The photography and cinematography are excellent. Some of the images have been so wonderfully and artistically shot and brought on screen. I liked how beautifully the relationship between Clelia and her mother (played by the fabulous Magali Noël) was portrayed and how Clelia's obsession with photographing everything reflects her own life. Sophie Marceau does very well, carrying the film, in spite of having a weakly written character. Guillaume Canet is okay and Pascal Gregory is awful. Perhaps Zulawski wanted to present the film like a photograph which captures a moment but tells a lot about the surrounding time period. He doesn't succeed though. For me, it's one of those films that I wouldn't call great but I didn't mind watching either.