Dick is the worst.
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Never let it be said that I bury the lede! Before I continue, I realize that I have a blanket spoiler warning for all my reviews, but this review in particular is a murder mystery and I’ll be spoiling a lot of it. This is because you can’t have a real conversation about a film without talking about what actually happens in it. Random, non-spoiler comments like “The camera movement is artistically done” are junk and don’t really give you any insight into anything.
Back to dick being the worst. I am referring not to “Tricky Dick” Nixon, or men in general, but specifically sex with men. Now, this doesn’t come from Movieshyte, this comes from the most unassailable source there is: The internet. Yes, the internet has informed me that women are pretty much over sex with men. I’m not sure when women reached this conclusion, it’s very possible they knew it from the jump, but it’s taken roughly 300,000 years for them to say it openly. Well, say it to men. It’s possible they’ve been telling it to each other over the secret “women’s information pipeline” for thousands of years.
You don’t just have to take the internet’s word for it. We have data! Women are falling off Tinder like timber, and migrating en masse to same-sex hook up apps. If sex with men were so great, would this be the case? The data speaks for itself. Dick is the worst.
Which brings me to Bodil, the heroine of “Faithfully Yours”, the delightful Dutch mystery that I am, in theory, supposed to be talking about. Bodil loves having sex with men. *Gasp!*. I can hear the reactions of all the women reading this on Movieshyte: “TRAITOR!!” Sex? With men?? In 2026 (or 2022, when the film was made, but whatever)?? GROSS. She obviously must be punished for being a traitor to her gender.
The filmmakers agree! Because the entire purpose of “Faithfully Yours” is to punish Bodil for having the audacity to like dick. Every single man Bodil encounters, at some point during the film, she will be fleeing for her life away from them. That’s what you get, Bodil! You like sex with men? Then you have to live with the consequences: They will all try to kill you at some point.
Or... Bodil *thinks* they’re trying to kill her. Before the opening credits, the movie opens with a pretentious quote, which is something along the lines of the problem with liars isn’t that nobody believes them, it’s that they are incapable of believing anybody else. On the one hand, starting your film with a pretentious quote does give an audience a clue as to what your movie is going to be about, and possibly provide them with a solid lens to view it through. On the other hand, pretentious quotes are pretentious. If you’re going to make a movie about lying, then try just making a movie about lying and don’t be a douche about it.
The lying starts right away. Bodil and her best friend Isabel, who has 80s hair, are on an ‘academic retreat’ or whatever where they are supposed to go to this lecture and then hang out and have a fun girls night. What the trip *actually* is, is a fuck retreat where both Bodil and Isabel (who are both married, but monogamy is overrated so that’s not exactly an ethical sticking point for me) find strangers to hook up with while their clueless husbands are at home watching sports or being gross or whatever men do.
You might notice right away that I actually buried the lede. Because the biggest takeaway from this movie is that ISABEL HAS 80s HAIR. It’s fantastic! What happened to 80s hair, anyway? I get that it’s, like, a ton of effort... But it’s worth it! Isabel is insane. I wanted the movie to be about her. She goes to this Belgian sex club, and not only has 80s hair, but is wearing that 80s oversized jacket with the huge shoulders. It’s not just because I came up in the 80s that I appreciate these stylistic choices, 80s hair and jackets are OBJECTIVELY the best. I know this because I asked an AI chatbot and it confirmed that huge, blowout hair that requires an entire can of hairspray to maintain is the best. Then, as a control, I asked it if 90s hair was the best, and it agreed... So I immediately shut it off because it was right the first time.
Not only does Isabel have 80s hair... She’s into women. Which makes sense, because her husband is a controlling asshole who put a tracker in her phone without telling her. I don’t condone assholery... But I kind of get it. You want to control the 80s hair. But you can’t. It’s too wild. Too free. The 80s hair will not succumb to the will of any man.
While Bodil is busy hooking up with some dopey professor (who, admittedly, works out and does not have what I would consider a “professor’s body”), Isabel is sleeping with a hot woman. Who happens to be Bodil’s sister. The point is, Isabel *will not be punished*, because she has chosen the correct lover, whereas Bodil will eventually think her professor hook-up wants to kill her and have to run away from him. Isabel, in fact, eventually fakes her own death, which puts Bodil in mortal danger in addition to freaking her out, and Isabel’s *punishment* for all of this is that she and Bodil’s sister get on a plane and fly off to live happily ever after at the end of the movie. Presumably to paradise island or somewhere that doesn’t have any men.
Therefore, the idea that *liars* are being punished in this movie is ridiculous. Isabel is the queen of liars and she gets off scot-free, zero repercussions for anything she’s done. It turns out that the pretentious quote *was lying to the audience* by telling them they’re about to watch a movie about lies, when, in actuality, they’re about to watch a movie about how having sex with men is lame.
But that’s not the only deception propagated on us. I’ve already discussed how Bodil constantly runs from men... Except, the times when she is forced to actually confront them... She pwns them! She tases the shit out of her husband, and when Isabel’s asshole husband actually *does* try and kill Bodil... She leads him into the ocean, comes up behind him with a rear naked choke and drowns him. Huh?!? Bodil has a navy seal skillset? Why was she running away when she was capable of this?? Deception. Lies. If Bodil keeps running away, those men will *think* she’s helpless, until she reveals her actual skills and takes them out. Again... It’s not the liar being punished... It’s the gross men. Especially Isabel’s husband. He gets what he deserves for trying to control Isabel and her 80s hair.
The detectives trying to solve Isabel’s fake murder are both women, and I have to assume that they are May-December lesbians, because one of them is in her fifties and the other is like in her twenties, and I also have to assume that they’re the only police in Belgium because the police station is cavernous and empty of any other cops. You wouldn’t normally think a 55-year-old elderly stateswoman and a petite girl in her early 20s would represent the tyrannical enforcement arm of the state, BUT THEY DO. Fucking cops!! Bodil tells the cops she’s in danger, and asks them to protect her... And they tell her they don’t believe her and they won’t help her. What? Aren’t cops supposed to protect and serve? They can just refuse to help somebody? Of course they can, because they serve and protect THE STATE, not the people! Not Bodil! If I didn’t already know Bodil was a penis-liking traitor, I would have been upset that the cops just straight up refused to help her.
There you have it. A movie about lying turns out to be lying about being about lying. I do want to add that the direction is solid and the camera movement is quite artistic.
9/10