Movie Review: Faithfully Yours

The 2022 Netflix movie "Faithfully Yours" has enough of everything to keep viewers entertained. Photo / Netflix

Faithfully Yours (M, 135 mins) Now streaming on Netflix, in Dutch with subtitles

Directed by André van Duren

When Bodil (Bracha van Doesburgh), a family court judge, and her bestie Isabel (Elise Schaap), a highly organised person in charge of their itinerary, set off from Holland by train to Ostend, Belgium, it appears they’re just a couple of 40-somethings going off for a girls’ weekend. They do it often.

Their husbands, serious doctor Milan (Nasrdin Dchar) and neurotic writer Luuk (Gijs Naber), a boring pair of guys, don’t seem to mind. It seems perfectly reasonable to those of us watching that the women would want a break from them. Milan doesn’t bother Bodil on these weekends, but Luuk does. Soon after their departure, he calls in a panic, having fallen and immobilised himself.

But Isabel doesn’t go home. She goes to a flash hotel, for a mystery assignment, while Bodil goes to an enormous country house near the sea, which turns out to be hers, shared with her younger sister Yara (Hannah Hoekstra) who is unexpectedly in the house when Bodil arrives.

Yara appears to have nothing much in common with Bodil except the house and doesn’t like Bodil at all. She promptly leaves and Bodil scurries off to a lecture, ironically on lying, given by academic Michael Samuels (Matteo Simoni) who turns out to be Bodil’s lover. The country house becomes the setting for raunchy sex.

It’s also the setting of a murder. A local dog, out with its owner for a walk in the sand dunes, steps in a pool of blood lying in the hallway of Bodil and Yara’s house. Romantic mystery becomes thriller.

There’s no body but when the police investigate, the blood is identified as Isobel’s. Loverboy Michael takes off quick smart. The husbands arrive. Bodil, caught in her own web of deceit, piles up lie upon lie and soon becomes a murder suspect.

Bodil and Isobel aren’t the only liars. The husbands reveal themselves to be liars too, resorting to escaping their unhappiness through lies and deception. Faithfully Yours is a bit of a sad commentary on the lives of disillusioned married people.

Experienced thriller director André van Duren directed and co-wrote the film for Netflix. It’s beautifully shot, capturing the beauty of Ostend and its surrounds, and close-ups are well handled. Acting is good, characters are all suitably complex, there’s a police investigation that’s almost completely convincing, although one has to wonder why the police apparently didn’t interview that appalled dog-walker whose bloody-mouthed dog came bounding towards him right at the start, and then there’s the raunchy sex. All of these add up to a good couple of hours’ viewing and the plot is gripping enough to ensure another Netflix hit.

As in many good thrillers, suspicion falls on one character after another. If this becomes tiresome, the ending compensates, with its final twist, the race against the clock, the private airport scene complete with the getaway plane that’s reminiscent of the final Casablanca scene, and the big reveal.

Highly recommended.

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