Faithfully Yours 2023 Movie Review
Faithfully Yours is a new drama directed and partly written by André van Duren, director of De Helleveeg.
The film is about two friends Bodil (Bracha van Doesburgh) and Isabel (Elise Schaap), who have a secret way out of their daily busy work and family lives. They secretly go to the Belgian coast on weekends, to be able to cheat here and forget all their problems for a while. They then make sure they are each other’s alibis so their men don’t find out about their secret weekend plans.
When Isabel then goes missing during a weekend, it looks like a crime in which Bodil suddenly appears to be guilty after a police investigation. Bodil thus tries to investigate what really happened to Isabel, but risks exposing all their secrets.
With this film, the director and co-writers try to create a dark mystery thriller, but they fail due to the fast pace and lack of details. The fast narrative pace makes it difficult to follow the film right from the start. For example, you don’t really get a good introduction to the characters, so as a viewer you don’t really care about them. When one suddenly disappears, your interest in the story doesn’t really increase.
The film quickly loses its realism due to things like a rushed and unclear police investigation. When the police think they have found evidence, they only inform the girlfriend of the missing person, while her husband is not involved. When Bodil herself finds evidence that can clear her name, she treats it unwisely so that the possible perpetrator can erase this evidence again.
The film also loses its realism due to the inferior quality of its effects. Blood that is found during the investigation quickly does not really come across and is clearly film blood.
Bracha van Doesburgh tries to carry the film as the main character, but thanks to the lesser script, her characters are portrayed as someone who always makes stupid, illogical decisions. Thanks to the script, Gijs Naber also comes across as a bit too exaggerated, which makes it no longer seem so realistic.
