Fidelity is a 2019 erotic Russian drama film directed by Nigina Sayfullaeva. Evgeniya Gromova stars as Lena, a thirty-year-old OBGYN, while Aleksandr Pal plays her husband, Sergei. The film’s plot unfolds around the concepts of love, trust, and their surrounding issues.

Plot Summary

Lena is a successful physician and mother, happily married to a drama theater actor, Sergei, but she feels an inexplicable emotional and physical gap growing between them that is worsened by their lack of sex. After receiving a questionable text from Sergei’s co-actress Katya, Lena begins to suspect that Sergei is cheating on her, which leads her to have meaningless one-night stands. While plunging into this self-indulgent world, Lena feels powerful and liberated but it quickly devolves into deception and emotional chaos. While grappling with this double life, Lena must also ask herself the philosophical questions of what fidelity means and what the consequences will be.

Character Analysis

• Lena (Evgeniya Gromova): An OBGYN that deeply cares for her patients, struggling with infidelity while trying to reconcile her deeply hidden needs and desires.
• Sergei (Aleksandr Pal): Actor and Lena’s spouse whose indifference and supposed infidelity serve as the driving force behind Lena’s actions.
• Katya (Marina Vasileva): Sergei’s associate and co-actor whom Sergei’s interactions with arouse Lena’s doubts and insecurities.
• Ivan (Aleksey Agranovich): One of Lena’s associates who along with Lena forms the cluster of her self-searching journey and adds to her emotional turmoil.

Main Issues and Approach

Vernost explores human relationships with respect to:

• Desire and Suppression: The movie looks at the aftermath of desires that remain unfulfilled and the extremes some humans go to, to fulfill them.
• Trust and Betrayal: It captures the most delicate aspects of trust within close relationships, and how suspicion can give birth to immoral actions.
• Self-Exploration: Lena’s travels are in a significant way, a voyage for understanding her individual themes of identity and value through sexuality’s playful sides.

Nigina Sayfullaeva’s directorial approach…is direct and brutal. She presents harsh scenes meant to depict Lena’s life without being overly dramatic. At the same time, there are no excesses. The film sharply contrasts Lena’s professional life with her secret life, which reflects the duality of her life.

Conclusions

Vernost is about the aching imbalances of infidelity, deep desire, and self-realization.

By following Lena’s story, the film critiques a major social issue and makes the audience consider the complexity of human interactions. Evgeniya Gromova’s masterful portrayal of Lena makes her attempts at self and sexual identity very engaging as well as easy to empathize with.