‘Infidelity Can Be Fatal’ is a Lifetime noir mystery directed by Danny J. Boyle and written by Erica Deutschman. It stars Lanie McAuley, Matthew MacCaull, Carly Fawcett, Dallas Blake, Jonathan Hawley Purvis, and Alana Hawley Purvis. In a rare turn of events for a Lifetime film, instead of an extremely shoddy story, there is a somewhat complex noir plot that drives this film. In fact, with better actors, more competent production and camerawork, and a polished version of the same script, this could easily be a ’90s erotic thriller about betrayal and deceit, which would probably be remembered today for its diner scenes, emulation of noir lighting from the 1940s and campy plot that’s highly self-aware, possibly even starring Nicholas Cage or Richard Gere.
Infidelity Can Be Fatal (2023) Plot Summary & Movie Synopsis
Lucy Thompson is a private investigator running her own agency where she works for clients suspicious of their spouses’ fidelity. She has a name in the business for being highly dedicated and persistent in her job. When she was a child, her father ran away from home with his secretary, and that devastated her mother. This is what made her decide to be a private investigator so she could prevent other families from getting destroyed the same way as hers.
Given her history and the profession she’s in, Lucy is a highly suspicious individual and thinks of trust as being a weakness, pushing her to not date and to lead a solitary life. The only person that she trusts is her best friend from college, Cami. Cami is married to Charles in what Lucy, despite herself, sees as a perfect marriage, and to her, their relationship is the closest that any can get her to believing in true love. Lucy also has a new associate working at her firm with her, a man named August, who is highly competent and dedicated to his job.
One day, a man named Clive Cassel arrives at Lucy’s office, wanting to hire her to tail his wife, Adriana. Clive and Adriana have been together for eight years, and while there was a time when they were in love, it’s now well in the past. He has adequate reasons to believe she is cheating on him and wants Lucy to pursue her. Lucy starts her investigation, but there’s next to no evidence about the woman’s infidelity.
Clive wants her to continue, nonetheless. An attraction soon starts to bloom between Lucy and Clive. This jeopardizes her profession as she learns that some unknown figure is also tailing her. Soon, her house gets broken into and ransacked while her romance with Clive is revealed as being not what it appears to be. A dangerous criminal that Lucy put behind bars is out at large, and Cami’s marriage also seems to be falling apart. All this intertwines to create a web of lies and deceit from which Lucy has to save herself.
Why is Clive so persistent about having Adriana investigated?
As a red herring, Clive is constantly painted as a suspicious character with mysterious motives hiding underneath his friendly and innocuous surface. He’s an enigmatic character in general, about whose life there is not much in the public eye, and the only information we have about him is that he’s in the tech business and is extremely wealthy. He believes that Adriana has become distant and that she has started to keep a check on his calls.
Her meetings with clients behind closed doors are also a cause of suspicion as she’s an interior designer, and there’s no need for such confidentiality in her line of work. When Lucy turns up with no evidence yet, Clive is insistent that she continues, we are made to believe that he is doing it in order to be able to keep tabs on Lucy and also maintain contact with her. His reason is that if there is not enough evidence about his wife’s infidelity, he will be financially exploited in the event of a divorce. Eventually, we’ll get to see that Clive’s intuition about Adriana was not wrong, as she was having an affair and that she was also after his wealth.
Who is Dean Calvet?
Dean Calvet is the first dodgy figure that Lucy catches Adriana with. There’s no information available about him, but one thing she knows for sure is that the two are not romantically involved, as their meeting was quite businesslike. In the film, envelopes are a motif throughout as being containers of information, and Adriana handing an envelope to Dean as he is leaving is the first sign we get of who he is.
Dean Calvet is a private investigator like Lucy. He was hired by Charles, who was having an affair with Adriana, to keep a watch on Lucy. It’s Dean who sends Lucy her compromising photos with Clive. He was hired for the same reason that Clive hired Lucy – both spouses were extremely suspicious of each other, and they were trying to see who would be the first to get evidence that would jeopardize the other’s standing in the marriage. Dean also creates the untraceable bank account into which Adriana is meant to transfer all the money she inherits from her dead husband.
Infidelity Can Be Fatal (2023) Movie Ending, Explained
Why does Charles need Adriana’s money?
Charles had indulged in some gambling at some time, which cost him all of his money and ultimately left him and Cami penniless. It’s not specified as to whether his affair with Adriana was economically motivated from the beginning or whether, following his bankruptcy, he baited Adriana. But what we do know is that Clive’s wealth is something that Charles had had his eye on in order to save himself. This also puts into perspective Dean Calvet being hired to tail Clive as they were perhaps aiming to blackmail him with the information about his extramarital affair.
Following Clive’s death at the hands of Lucy, a fantastic outcome for Charles and Adriana, who were merely trying to eke money out of him, Charles got an untraceable bank account opened in order to make Adriana transfer all the money she has inherited from him. He played a ruse about them leaving the country together to settle down abroad and begin anew.
This way, he got all the money into this bank account, following which he killed Adriana and left for home, hoping to continue his happy married life with Cami, which he believed would remain untarnished by it all. Unfortunately for him, in following Dean Calvet, Lucy discovered the entire conspiracy and stifled his plans.
At the end of the film, three months have passed since Charles killed Adriana. Lucy is writing a book about the experiences she underwent in the course of the case of following Adriana Cassel. Cami has bagged a publisher that’s offering Lucy a great deal for her book. Lucy is optimistic about the future of her agency following the publication of her book.
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Watch the ‘Infidelity Can Be Fatal’ Trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhiTNGzTIi4
