It’s quite remarkable how the ménage-à-trois has managed to remain such a staple, almost a requisite of French cinema. This charming, surprising, extremely winning romantic comedy actually involves two, with writer/star/director Louis Garrel placing himself, modestly one should say, in both.
Garrel is Abel, who in the film’s prologue is dumped by his girlfriend Marianne (Laetitia Casta), for their mutual friend Paul. Eight years later, Paul has died of a heart attack and Abel and Marianne tentatively ponder a reunion. But Paul’s sister Eve (Lily-Rose Depp) has set her sights on a man she’s adored since childhood and is willing to play dirty. Meanwhile, Marianne’s young son appears to have his own mischievous agenda.
In other hands this scenario could seem trite. But Garrel’s co-writer is the inestimable Jean-Claude Carrière, Luis Buñuel’s long-term collaborator, whose adaptation of The Unbearable Lightness of Being offered one of cinema’s most complex love triangles.
As A Faithful Man’s voiceover switches between the three lovers, Carrière and Garrel introduce layers of comic intrigue, while delicately sketching three very different, yet equally confused emotional journeys.
The result plays like a short story — deftly detailed, efficient, full of telling vignettes, perfectly formed.
