Fidelity (La Fidélité in the original French) is the story of a beautiful young photographer who falls madly for a decent guy, a publisher of children’s books, marries him, then falls madly for another guy, a street-punk photographer. It might also be, in code, the story of its star and her relationship with its writer/director Andrzej Zulawski.
Sophie Marceau plays the sequentially amorous Clélia, a strong woman in control of her own life who turns the head of every man she encounters. At the time Fidelity was made, Marceau was in a long-term relationship with Zulawski. They had a son together. Shortly after finishing this film, the two of them split up and Marceau took up with an American movie producer. Zulawski didn’t make another film for 15 years. Any resemblance between the characters in this picture and any persons, living or dead etc etc.
Perhaps as mitigation, Zulawski does present Marceau as the girl who just can’t help it, an almost supernaturally attractive woman who turns every head. When she meets Clève (Pascal Greggory) at a flower shop he is instantly transformed from a suave publisher and man about town into a babbling idiot. When her mother is hospitalised and she goes to visit, the doctor hits on her. When she meets her new employer (Michel Subor), owner of a media empire specialising in tittle-tattle, he also hits on her, even though he’s old enough to be her father, and might in fact be her father. On her first assignment, photographing the hockey team her boss also owns, she sleeps with one of the players, right there in the changing room. He woos her by showing her his penis – he also cannot help himself (a courting technique probably not to be recommended but a brilliant scene). Later, on meeting the street-punk photographer Nemo (Guillaume Canet) – a guy who sleeps under his desk and is a stranger to washing – she seems unfazed when he’s instantly transformed into her babbling slave, though this time Cupid has got an arrow into her too.
Honestly, give this movie a good 90 minutes before even hazarding a verdict on it. It takes that long (yes, possibly too long) for Zulawski to get his ducks in a row and to start turning up the mad atmosphere.
The story is fairly well known in France, since it’s an adaptation of The Princess of Clèves, the 17th-century novel by Madame de la Fayette, said to be the first example of a psychological novel. It was a huge success at the time and to this day retains a purchase on French culture. In its fascination with unwise love affairs it’s not unlike Les Liaisons Dangereuses.
Zulawski approaches it as if he’s remaking Dallas or Dynasty. There’s more than a touch of the overheated melodrama here, but then Zulawski does often push the needle into the red zone in his movies, often to test the structure of the genre he’s working in (see, for example, his banzai horror movie Possession).
Also, once the fairly slow-moving first 90 (of 166) minutes are out of the way, and we’ve watched one unfortunate after another becoming unmanned, unwomanned also, by love, Zulawski ups the pace for the last chunk of his movie. Revelations start to come quicker, scenes get shorter and regular collaborator Andrzej Korzynski’s syrupy score takes on a more obviously ironic note.
Apart from one brilliant moment when Marceau laughs directly at the camera, as if to give the audience a gigantic nudge in the right direction, the performances have a semi-robotic feel, as if all the characters on the screen were animated by a force beyond their control. They’re creatures having their chains yanked by cruel unseen forces, or maybe Zulawski’s own worst fears incarnate.
In the manner of a modern melodramatic soap opera, this is an event-filled drama in which people with things to say just come out and say them. Declamatory speeches are the norm. Subtlety is not that evident. People enter rooms and then leave them. A helicopter descends from the sky, its occupant also says his piece and then he is off back into the sky, departing as quickly as he arrived. Who’d be these people? They’re all awful. Shoulder pads optional.
Fidelity – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2023
