Film Review
After the success of his first full-length film
Les Deux amis (2015), actor-turned-director
Louis Garrel returns with a similarly well-crafted variation on the love-triangle
theme. As in his first film, Garrel plays a leading role, this time
partnered by two talented and charismatic performers Laetitia Casta and Lily-Rose
Depp. Skipping effortlessly between dramatic intrigue and laugh-out-loud
farce, helped by a script that is both slick and witty,
L'Homme fidèle
(
A Faithful Man) is such a brazen homage to the French New Wave that
it is easy to forget it was made over half a century after that glorious phase
of French cinema had come and gone.
Louis Garrel is a son of
la Nouvelle Vague in both a figurative and
literal sense. His father was the highly regarded auteur filmmaker Philippe
Garrel, who first made his impact in the late 1960s with innovative avant-garde
films such as
Le Révélateur
(1968), before going on to prove his serious auteur credentials in such spellbinding
works as
J'entends plus la
guitare (1991). His mother, the actress Brigitte Sy, has also
made her mark recently as a filmmaker, with
Les Mains libres (2010)
and
L'Astragale (2015). Louis
Garrel's more than passing resemblance to New Wave icon Jean-Pierre Léaud
is presumably what led him to cast himself as a close relation of Antoine
Doinel in
L'Homme fidèle, which owes a great deal to Francois
Truffaut's mid-period comedies
Baisers
volés (1968) and
Domicile
conjugale (1970) (with a soupçon of
La Mariée était
en noir thrown in for good measure).
Garrel exercised good judgement in co-authoring his film with a more experienced
writer, the incredibly prolific man of letters Jean-Claude Carrière.
The latter not only collaborated with Garrel's father on
L'Ombre des femmes (2015);
he also scripted some of French cinema's enduring classics, including several
for Luis Buñuel:
Belle de jour
(1967) and
Le
Charme discret de la bourgeoisie (1972). Carrière's
idiosyncratic dark humour and penchant for the surreal manifests itself throughout
L'Homme fidèle, bringing to it an underlying strain of Hitchcockian
menace to counterpoint its whimsical Truffautesque humour.
Served by an admirable screenplay that manages to stay true to life no matter
how bizarre and improbable the story becomes, the three lead actors soon
form a compelling trio, with Garrel appearing at his most disarmingly amiable
as a narcissiic but decent sort who is hopelessly torn between a merciless
man-eater (Depp) and a possible cold-hearted murderess (Casta). The
film doesn't quite have the depth and maturity of Garrel's first feature
but it is every bit as satisfying - and everything that a French New Wave
addict could possibly ask for.
© James Travers 2019
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Film Synopsis
Abel, a journalist in his early thirties, has been in a settled relationship
with his girlfriend Marianne for three years. Then, suddenly, she tells
him she has been made pregnant by his best friend Paul, whom she now intends
to marry. Ten years later, Abel re-enters Marianne's life after learning
that Paul has recently died in his sleep, leaving her to bring up their young
son Joseph alone. Before he knows it, Abel has resumed his conjugal
life with Marianne, but becomes anxious when her eight-year-old son confides
in him that Paul was poisoned by his wife. The situation becomes further
complicated when Paul's emotionally unstable younger sister Eve shows up and
begins luring Abel into an intense love affair...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.