Sophie Marceau plays Clelia, an art photographer hired to work for the tabloid branch of a multimedia empire of a Ted Turner-type Mac Roi who just may be her father. Her arty (often out-of-focus) photographs enrage her supervisor (an energetic performance from Edith Scob of EYES WITHOUT A FACE) but prove successful. Clelia meets and falls in love Cleve (Pascal Gregory), whose family publishing company has just been bought out by Clelia's boss. After his father dies, Cleve dumps his marriage-of-convenience fiancee (Mac Roi's sister) to marry Clelia. There domestic bliss is constantly disrupted by her mother's illness and death, Mac Roi's takeovers, and various family scandals (Cleve's bishop brother runs off with a married woman and touchingly conveys the motivations behind his decision to a bloodthirsty press). In spite of her intense love for Cleve, Clelia finds herself falling for photographer Nemo (Patrick Dempsey look-alike Guillaume Canet), constantly under threat after exposing child brothels and a black market organ trade. Though Clelia never consummates her relationship with Nemo, the emotional infidelity is devastating enough to send Cleve into a tailspin which finds him collaborating with Mac Roi and company whose flashy, muckraking multimedia empire also supports various illegal activities.

The above description does not even encompass all that is going on in the two-and-a-half hour film. A far more effective film about the effects of emotional infidelity than EYES WIDE SHUT (which says and does less in the same amount of running time), LA FIDELITE is perhaps the most mainstream of Zulawski's films but not without its share of quirks. The Zulawski style is there: lengthy takes, tracking and steadicam shots (the film apparently won a French award for best steadicam shot). The seemingly mock-sentimental is actually very appropriate to the level of Zulawski's melodrama which extends from intimate recitations of poetry (in English by Gregory and Marceau with a delightful accent) to HK-style gunplay and explosions. At times, the film seems like an acting portfolio for Marceau, demonstrating her range (here she is in an erotic scene, here she is in high drama, here she is with a machine gun) and her performance is right up there with Isabelle Adjani's (whom she at times resembles) extraordinary work in the earlier Zulawski film POSSESSION or Romy Schnedier in his IMPORTANCE OF LOVE. Pascal Gregory gives a delightfully quirky performance in what might have been a doir role. Canet also gives a strong performance but is overshadowed by the other two leads. Also notable are Scob and Marina Hands as Clelia's sweet yet duplicitous half-sister. The film was produced by Paulo Branco, who has produced such art-house fare as Chantal Ackerman's LA CAPTIVE. The photography is slick and the costumes are from the usual chic mix of designers one encounters in such films that skirt the arthouse and mainstream genres.

Eric Cotenas