As of the following changeset, hg log -r rev file fails to work in certain cases:

changeset:   11899:99cafcae25d9
user:        Nicolas Dumazet <nicdumz.commits@gmail.com>
date:        Sun Aug 15 23:17:53 2010 +0900
summary:     log: do not --follow file that is deleted and recreated later (issue732)

rev can be any kind of revision or revset.

Test case:

$ hg init foo
$ cd foo
$ echo a > a
$ hg ci -Am a
adding a
$ echo a >> a
$ hg ci -Am aa
$ hg log -r 0 a

The last command will return no output. The following command will, however, work:

$ hg log -r 1 a

Note that this doesn't affect a command like this:

$ hg log -r '0 and file("a")'