Le Fidèle
Michaël R. Roskam, Belgium, France, Netherlands, 2017o
The story of an Amour fou at first sight: The young racing driver Bibi meets the car thief Gigi. She comes from a rich family and works in her father's racing steel. He comes from a working class background and is still part of his childhood gang which now commits robberies. He introduces her to the milieu from which he wants to get. A last coup is supposed to fix everything. Of course, it goes wrong. But this is only the beginning of the love drama.
The cinephile soul sometimes needs this as well: just a coolly photographed film noir about a cool couple in cool clothes and cars, bursting with sex appeal. In the last third at the latest, the question arises whether the melodrama really had to come this far with the breathtaking racing driver Bibi and her stunning car thief Gigi, who went too far in the wake of his criminal buddies. And from then on, at the latest, Adèle Exarchopoulos, who with La vie d'Adèle a few years ago had driven many out of their minds, has to start again with snot and red eyes as she did back then. But until then, one has long since fallen in love with these two hopelessly entangled bodies and souls. And anyway: Did James Caan & Tuesday Weld have more depth in the Bad Boy romance Thief? Were Steve McQueen & Ali MacGraw or Kim Basinger & Alec Baldwin more stringently doomed couples in The Getaway? Well then.
Andreas FurlerDas Brüsseler Kriminaldrama ist kurzweilig, die düstere Bildsprache überzeugt. Was man jedoch bis zum Schluss vermisst, ist eine gewisse Tiefe aufseiten der Protagonisten, die glaubhaft macht, wieso die beiden auch in der kaum ausgelebten Liebe bereit sind, weit über die Grenzen hinausgehen.
Muriel GnehmOutre son tandem d'acteurs efficace, le film est une merveille de réalisation, dans les scènes d'action comme celles plus (mélo)dramatiques.
Antoine Le FurLe Fidèle déferle en un torrent de cinéma de deux heures. Bien que numérique, l'image ouvragée par le chef opérateur Nicolas Karakatsanis a de la chair, de la profondeur, de la densité, si palpable qu'on pourrait presque la saisir entre les doigts.
Fabien Baumann