There’s No Love Like Easy Love in Garrel’s Intriguing Farce “A Faithful Man” | Blu-ray Review

Louis Garrel’s sophomore film, A Faithful Man, which was co-written by the esteemed scribe Jean-Claude Carriere, premiered at TIFF in 2018 prior to competing in San Sebastian, going on to garner Lily-Rose Depp a Cesar nod for Most Promising Actress. Released by Kino Lorber in July of 2019, the title raked in over seventy-seven thousand at the domestic box office. An odd, even discomfiting dark romantic drama, Garrel’s second stint as director marks the notable actor as promising and as playful behind the camera as he is in front of it.

Whatever Carriere and Garrel are trying to do here, there’s definitely enough weirdness to cast doubt on the intentions of all players save Eve, who is simply acting on the adolescent urges she’s mulled over since girlhood. An encounter with a doctor whom Marianne may or may not have slept with in exchange for sidestepping an autopsy on her dead husband remains something in the back of our minds (as well as Abel’s). Likewise, the film’s diegetic inclusion of the 1946 film noir The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (a classic noir long languished in the public domain), which featured a deadly love triangle between Barbara Stanwyck, Van Heflin and Kirk Douglas, whose childhood relationships become a perverted tangle as adults, seems to provide some textual reference points. And as it’s revealed all their trajectories were the result of a fateful dash of chance, A Faithful Man becomes not so much a relevant film than a portrait of dysfunctional heteronormative peccadillos.

Disc Review:

Kino Lorber releases A Faithful Man in 2.39:1 with 5.1 surround and 2.0 Stereo. Picture and sound quality are serviceable in the transfer but there are no extra features available.

Film Rating: ★★★/☆☆☆☆☆
Disc Rating: ★★★/☆☆☆☆☆