Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Devotion, A Story Of Love And Desire’ On Netflix, Where A Seemingly Solid Couple Faces Infidelity And Other Problems (2024)

Usually, when you see a story about infidelity in a marriage or relationship, you see obvious cracks in that relationship’s foundation that might have led one of the members of the couple to cheat. But what if the couple looks blissful, in both public and private? A new Netflix drama from Italy explores exactly that circ*mstance.

DEVOTION, A STORY OF LOVE AND DESIRE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A view of Milan. We see the stairway of an old building, and a real estate agent explaining to a couple that there is no elevator, and 99 steps to the apartment she’s showing, “but it’s worth it, because you’ll love it.”

The Gist: Margherita Verna (Lucrezia Guidone) is showing the apartment to a couple who seem to hate everything she loves about the place, including the big living room, big, sunny windows, and the detailed trim everywhere. In walks another client, Carlo Pentecoste (Michele Riondino); Margherita claims she must have double-booked showings. But after the couple leaves, the two have sex in the bedroom. Turns out Carlo and Margherita are married to each other.

They’ve been together for five years, and still seem to be very much in love with each other. They also both love that apartment that Margherita is showing to clients, but both know they can’t afford it.

Carlo is an author and a writing professor at the local university. In his class, he’s working with a talented student, Sofia Casadei (Carolina Sala), whom he thinks hasn’t gotten personal enough in her writing to unlock her potential. He says he’ll meet with her to help her on the class assignment of writing about a day that had a great impact on her life.

Meanwhile, Margherita, obsessed with the apartment, gets a handsome new physical therapist who tells her that her chronic pain might be due less to an old injury than to tension that she’s holding in.

Margherita met Carlo as he was working on his first novel, and her influence helped him finish it. He’s in the middle of his second novel, but inspiration has been lagging for him. At a birthday dinner for Carlo’s mother, his highly-critical father offers money to help them get the apartment, which rankles Carlo to no end.

At a dinner with his editor and some friends, he promises to finish it, but Margherita is always the one who gets the first look at the manuscript; this is when he decides that he thinks they should buy the apartment using the potential earnings of the new novel, even though it’s not done yet.

But his work with Sofia is tapping into some deep emotional wells for both him and his student. He even breaks his own rule and gives her the unfinished manuscript to read in order to help her open up on her writing exercise. But when the students start the exercise in class, Sofia gets overwhelmed and storms out. Carlo follows her, and in his effort to comfort her, things may or may not have gone too far.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of?Devotion, A Story Of Love And Desire (original title: Fedeltà) has a similar plot to The Affair, but with more straightforward storytelling. Also, the story feels more cosmopolitan and European thanThe Affair did. We also thought ofScenes From A Marriage when watching this show.

Our Take: It’s not often that you get a story about infidelity that involves a couple that are actually still deeply in love and lust with each other, which is why we’re intrigued by the story inDevotion.

As far as we can see, Carlo and Margherita aren’t having problems as a couple, at least on the surface. The first episode hints that things aren’t what they seem to be, of course, which is what may seed the idea of Carlo’s possible infidelity in your mind. Carlo doesn’t seem to be as inspired by Margherita as he once was, and Margherita is holding in some emotional pain that’s actually causing her physical pain.

But what we also see is two people who still have hot sex and say all the right things to each other. Could there be revelations coming as the possibility that Carlo cheated on his wife gets revealed? That seems likely, but writers Elisa Amoruso, Laura Colella and Alessandro Fabbri seem to be taking pains to not tease that out; if we see the cracks that caused this infidelity, fine, but it’s also fine if we don’t. We’re also content to just see how this disruption to their relationship plays out.

Sex and Skin: We see Carlo and Margherita have sex in the apartment they want, but there’s no explicit nudity in that scene.

Parting Shot: A student wanders into the bathroom, where Carlo and Sofia are, and sees something shocking. We’re just not sure what exactly that is.

Sleeper Star: Carolina Sala, who plays Sofia, gives off strong Julia Garner vibes in this series. And that’s a good thing.

Most Pilot-y Line: We’re not quite sure what Margherita’s obsession with the apartment is about just yet. She wants it so bad that she tells the couple bidding on it that the owner took it off the market. It seems like a different type of obsession that what Carlo is embroiled in, and we’re not quite sure where this plot is going.

Our Call: STREAM IT.Devotion, A Story Of Love And Desire is a complex title for a series that’s relatively simple to conceive. A seemingly happy couple get ripped apart by infidelity that’s either perceived or real. We’re definitely looking forward to seeing how the show’s central couple weathers this storm and what happens if the relationship doesn’t survive.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.