Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Nigina Sayfullaeva
Starring: Evgeniya Gromova, Aleksandr Pal, Marina Vasileva, Aleksey Agranovich
Fresh from causing a stir on its release in its native Russia, director
Nigina Sayfullaeva's sexually explicit Fidelity may
well feel quaint to western viewers, arriving a couple of decades late
to the party kicked off by the wave of graphic dramas that came out of
France and the UK at the turn of the century. While it feels inspired by
the likes of Catherine Breillat's Romance, Patrice Chéreau's Intimacy and Michael Winterbottom's
9 Songs, it stops short of asking its actors to perform any actual sexual
deeds, and the nudity is notably restricted to its attractive female
lead.
The striking Evgeniya Gromova is Lena, a successful doctor whose
marriage to stage actor Sergei (Aleksandr Pal) has grown stale
and passionless. Lena is desperate to have her sexual needs taken care
of, but Sergei refuses to indulge her, claiming that "sex without
passion is worse than no sex." Who can blame her then when inspired by
paranoia that Sergei is cheating with the lead actress in his latest
play, Lena decides to seek pleasure elsewhere? A trip to a nightclub
results in a disappointing motel encounter with a horny young
one-pump-and-done merchant. A few days later she's being rogered by a
mechanic on the beach, only to be interrupted by the police. When the
mechanic turns out to be the hubby of one of Lena's patients, both her
career and marriage are suddenly under threat.
Fidelity follows such a well-trodden path by Western
European standards that it often comes off as a Slavic film playing
Gallic dress-up. A recurring motif sees Lena constantly studying her
reflection, and as a film, Fidelity feels similarly
self-conscious. It's all too aware of how revolutionary it is in terms
of Russian cinema, which has long been notably chaste regarding
sexuality. But while it may feel like we've been here before with
various Binoches, Deneuves and Hupperts in the lead role, it's this very
self-consciousness that makes Fidelity stand out. There's
a sense that much like recent feminist works from the Middle East, this
is a movie constantly looking over its shoulder in fear of censorship
while looking to the west for approval.
Even by Western European standards, there's something refreshing about
Fidelity's disdain for moral judgment. As we watch Lena cheat on her man-child
husband, we're not tut-tutting and thinking "Poor old Sergei," but
rather "Good for you Lena!" Sayfullaeva gets us so onside with her
anti-heroine's emotionally misguided but perhaps psychologically
necessary journey that when she's confronted by the wronged spouses of
both herself and the mechanic, our contempt is not directed at Lena but
at her accusers. Both Sergei and the mechanic's wife seem obsessed with
rubbing Lena's face in the graphic details of her extra-marital sex, as
though they're disgusted at sex itself more so than the idea of their
other halves taking another lover.
Our empathy towards Lena is greatly enhanced by a quietly
attention-grabbing performance by Gromova, who really sells Lena's
frustrations. It's notable that Lena seems most comfortable with herself
when she's naked, constantly throwing away her clothes as though she
feels soiled by such coverings, like a reverse Eve. Her marriage to
Sergei appears doomed from the start because she's out of his league by
every conceivable metric – she's a woman who's found herself living with
a boy, something many female viewers will likely identify with in this
age of unprecedented arrested development among adult men. Lena is the
most mature and enlightened character in the film, but the rest try to
gaslight her into believing she's the villain. Ultimately, Sayfullaeva
suggests that women like Lena are progressing at a rate that Russia is
unwilling to keep up with.
