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Faithfully Yours

“Things come apart so easily when they have been held together with lies.” ― Dorothy Allison

Ostensibly, Faithfully Yours is a Netflix thriller done with precision and minimal production value. Just as the plot parses its motif of “lying” early on, so too the thriller hides its plot twists early and carefully for maximum surprise and leaves some clues to die on the wire, so to speak.

In other words, although it’s not Silence of the Lambs. It’s an enjoyable evening view that won’t compromise your sleep but will encourage you and your partner to ask smart questions.

Bo (Bracha van Doesburgh) and her best friend, Isabel (Elise Shaap), help each other lie to their husbands about their weekend together so they can be with their lovers instead. When Isabel is murdered, the lies to spouses and police create a web of deceit that takes all of a spare 95 minutes to entangle. Things fall apart—lesson learned.

That’s the fun of a B thriller because I hadn’t figured who did it until the very end, yet I had caught some bogus clues early on. Faithfully Yours may not make you that much more aesthetically rich by the end, but it will sensitize you to the cascading ramifications of lies, little white or not. On Netflix

Faithfully Yours

Director: Andre van Duren

Screenplay: van Duren, et el.

Cast: Bracha van Doesburgh

Run Time: 1h 35m

Rating: TV MA

John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts NPR’s It’s Movie Time and hosts Cinema Classics as well as podcasts Back Talk and Double Take out of WCBE 90.5 FM. Contact him at JohnDeSando52@gmail.com

John DeSando holds a BA from Georgetown University and a Ph.D. in English from The University of Arizona. He served several universities as a professor, dean, and academic vice president. He has been producing and broadcasting as a film critic on It’s Movie Time and Cinema Classics for more than two decades. DeSando received the Los Angeles Press Club's first-place honors for national entertainment journalism.