Fidelity

Clélia lands a lucrative job with the Paris tabloid La Verite, beginning her ascent as a photographer. Her mother accompanies her and presses the idea that honour should guide Clélia’s choices, given their shared past with Rupert MacRoi. The new city places her under the glare of a powerful media empire and a web of personal entanglements.

In Paris, Clélia gives a television interview about her photography books, including a study of absence and a study of fashion models without faces. The appearance boosts her profile but also draws attention from MacRoi’s orbit. She continues to photograph urban and fashion subjects, shaping her signature approach.

While photographing, Clélia meets Clève, a middle-aged children's book publisher, who invites her back to his office and they become lovers. She is introduced to his brother Bernard, a Catholic bishop, and their father appears only briefly. The encounter pulls Clélia deeper into a web of personal and familial intrigues.

For La Verite, Clélia covers a hockey team that MacRoi recently bought and finds herself in a locker room filled with naked players. MacRoi forcibly drags her through the showers to claim her, sparking a complicated power dynamic. She shoots the moment and ends up having sex with one of the players, blurring professional boundaries.

At MacRoi's dinner party, Clève declares his love for Clélia in front of family and his fiancée Genièvre, who reacts by slapping him and calling off the wedding. Later that evening, MacRoi announces his purchase of Clève’s publishing company, and Clève’s father collapses and dies. Clève pleads with Clélia not to leave him.

Clélia and her mother move into Clève’s house, where a nun tends to Clélia’s mother as she battles illness. Clève gives Clélia his mother's engagement ring, and she accepts, even as she feels haunted by lines from an Auden poem about ghosts and being lost. The home feel marks a new phase in their intertwined lives.

Clélia’s early La Verite photographs create a sensation and earn her grudging admiration from colleagues, though Némo shows a calculating interest. She marries Clève in a ceremony cluttered with paparazzi, a helicopter, and reporters, including Némo, who later delivers their wedding photos. Clélia’s mother collapses while searching the photos for images of Némo’s possible affair.

After the wedding, Némo leaves his girlfriend Ina and hands the wedding pictures to Clélia’s mother, triggering her collapse. She grows convinced Clélia is unfaithful and is rushed to the hospital in an ambulance, where she begs Clélia to choose her husband again. The ambulance stops and Clélia exits, distraught.

Némo continues to shadow Clélia, snapping pictures through windows and eventually entering to photograph them as they have sex. The surveillance feels intimate and unnerving, revealing his motives as a mix of desire and manipulation. Clélia remains drawn to Némo but refrains from an outright affair.

Clélia and Ina travel to Normandy to attend a motorcycle event, where Némo crashes but recovers quickly. He speaks of the illegal organ trade to impress his father, hinting at a darker underworld behind the glamour. They return to Paris by train, and at the station she sees the ghosts of her mother and father smiling at her.

Némo is attacked by a gang hired by organ traffickers, and Clélia asks him to reveal the underworld he’s investigating. She resists his advances, while Clève grows convinced she is having an affair, fueling mistrust and danger. The tension deepens as private lives spill into public scrutiny.

Clève plans to join his bishop brother in Brittany after the bishop’s dalliance with a married woman becomes a public scandal. Clélia calls La Verite to inform them of the bishop’s ‘love-nest,’ trying to shape the narrative and complicate Clève’s obligations. The bishop argues that true happiness must be seized, not denied.

Clélia goes to Némo’s house, and gunfire interrupts their moment; they manage to escape, and she starts to see Némo as the youth she never had. Later, during a publicity session outside the paper’s offices, snipers target Némo, his motorcycle catches fire, and MacRoi is killed by a shard of glass in the eye. Clève is injured in the chaos.

At MacRoi’s funeral, his daughter reorganizes the company and fires Clélia and her mother. Her husband appears to have a heart attack and dies on the steps, having given his wedding ring to Clélia. The ambulance stops and she leaves the city, distraught and alone.

Némo is interviewed on television about a new portfolio dedicated to Clélia, who has vanished from public life. A few years later, Clélia sees a MacRoi Production film about her life directed by Némo, titled The Princess of Cleve. She places her wedding rings on a tree branch as the ghost of her husband smiles, whispering forgiveness.