Critics reviews

Whatever Marceau may be like in real life, she can be a tremendously sympathetic and intelligent and compelling presence onscreen, as LA FIDELITE shows — she humanizes the extremes of Zulawski's cinema in a way no other actor I've seen can do. In fact it's the husband character in the film (Pascale Greggory) who goes in for more of the director's favoured mannerisms, flailing, spasming and twitching, though he does this less often and less frenetically than, say, the stars of POSSESSION.

Taking a sharp turn from She-Shaman's unbridled aggression, La fidélité (2000) seemed a perfect goodbye—to filmmaking and to Marceau. A majestic and mature contemporary version of La Princesse de Clèves, just as distinctive as Oliveira's The Letter (1999), it peppered a deeply developed meditation on duty and honour versus passion and happiness with ludicrous sub-plots featuring unscrupulous paparazzi and stylized violence—a reminder that Zulawski is a really impressive action director.

Forever fascinated by the contrast between the high and the low, the director meshes together disparate elements: The life of the super-rich is boldly juxtaposed with the shady demimonde of sleazy dogfights, ritualistic motorbike racing, and illicit organ trafficking (signature Żuławski image: a pair of freshly scooped-out human eyes resting in a frozen aluminum box). Compared to the secretion-oozing nuttiness of Possession, Fidelity is a work of almost touching delicacy and quiet desperation.