Die Geschichte der Adele H.

I loved this film, not only because I live in the city in which the story happened. Films based on personal diaries are always fascinating ('Heavenly Creatures') and this one is also haunting, due partly to the sepia tones. Adele lives in a bubble of despair, rarely venturing out from her tiny room. Her story is a sad one, painful and full of longing and Truffaut captures Adele's sense of isolation, of being out of this world, perfectly. You won't cry, the film is not manipulative, but you will empathize, you will feel her pain.

Summary: A talented writer, Adele Hugo, becomes obsessed with her former lover , the indebted and womanizing Liutenant Pinson. Her love for him consumes her entire life and she eventually goes crazy because he doesn't love her back.

Acting: Except for Adjani's performance, the acting is not very good, but that doesn't matter too much because the only person with a large role is Adjani. The guy who plays Pinson is pretty one dimensional. Anyway though, Adjani gives an Oscar-worthy performance, and balances her character's vigorously muscular and blunt aggression with her character's silky-fine desperation and entrapment. Another actress might have played Adele as being recklessly obsessed, but Adjani doesn't do that. Adjani actually shows us the thoughts and rationality of her character; we first see Adele as an intelligent, innocent young woman who somehow, some way, becomes slimmed down to a stub of passion in Pinson's presence. Cinematography: bland and bleak, which works in a way because that's how Adele views the world in comparison to her own out-of-proportion sadness, but also doesn't work because that's all it does: show us how the world looks like to Adele. I would have preferred if the cinematography actually captured the different emotions Adele was going through in each scene, it would have made the cinematography less one-note. This flaw in the cinematography unfortunately carries over to the overall tone of the film. Script: Good. It definitely conveys how Adele is always trying, with a passion so great it verges on the comical, to form the confusion of her life into a solid piece of truth. Part of this passion seems to be part of her neuroses; part of it seems to be the artist in her at work.

The one flaw in the script was the voice over at the end: it didn't really give you a good idea of the rest of Adele's life, and I bet the writer put it in there because he thought, " Whoa, this script is pretty long. I'd better gloss over the later years of Adele's life." Costume design: Adele's red dress seems appropriately color-coded with the cinematography of the film, which, as I stated above, isn't such a good thing. Nothing else besides that red dress stuck out at me, and the rest of the costume design was pretty mediocre. Camera-work: Very good. I particularly like the slow zoom-in on the picture of Pinson, it was very powerful. Another good camera-work choice was when Pinson realized that Adele had told her father that she and Pinson were getting married. The director filmed this scene with the door blocking half the screen, which made the viewer feel, like Adele, very cut off from Pinson. I really liked the camera-work here, actually. Music: Powerful and fitting. I particularly liked the music when Pinson was walking towards Adele at the end. Overall: Very good film mainly carried by Adjani's excellent performance.

A woman with a serious affliction, an overwhelming, all-consuming, mad obsession; starts to stalk her so called love, takes wide boundaries and she shoves, with grave consequence, and a dour deep depression.

It's a pitiful tale of a woman who is not in control of her actions or her words, whether that's inherited or due to her upbringing, her father's fame or the loss of her sister so young, who knows. Wonderfully performed by a youthful Isabelle Adjani, I'm not sure it travels into contemporary times as well as some of the directors other fabrications, and for a relatively short presentation, it drags its feet to an end that you anticipate not long after the ship has docked in Nova Scotia.

This is a period movie that takes place in the 1860s in Halifax, Nova Scotia. It concerns an unrequited love between Adele H., the daughter of Victor Hugo, and a member of the English military stationed there. It is directed by Francois Truffaut. At the film's beginning, there is some narration about the involvement of the French and British in the American Civil War, but the Civil War plays no part in the movie.

I enjoyed the feel of this film. French actress Isabelle Adjani superbly plays a woman whose love is rejected and who inches down a slippery slope to madness. The costumes and scenery ring true, and the movie conveys the feel of the Canadian Atlantic province. It was also interesting to learn this sidelight about Victor Hugo.

Most of all, I enjoyed this film because it raises the question of whether its main character is crazy to begin with or whether, being possessed of such a strong love, it was a natural progression to madness when it was rejected. It raises, but of course does not answer, what causes such a potent love to arise and what is the consequence of its extinguishment.

Isabelle Adjani plays the title role, that of Adele Hugo, daughter of the great French writer, a woman obsessively in love with an English army lieutenant who doesn't want her. The scene is Halifax, Nova Scotia, during the time of the American Civil War. She has followed Lt. Pinson (Bruce Robinson) from her home in exile on the island of Guernsey to be with him even though he has rejected her. Adjani's sensuous beauty and her intense and passionate nature command the screen and we are drawn to identify with her as she spirals toward madness as her abject pleas of love are unrequited. We watch as she debases herself in every way possible in a desperate attempt to gain Pinson's love, even to the point of giving him to other women. She is psychologically pleased with this because she thinks it shows that her love for him transcends sexuality. Of course the nature of obsessive love is always entirely selfish. If you really love someone who doesn't want you, you have to let them go. But of course she cannot.

Francois Truffaut directed and did a fine job of getting the most out of his young star. The maddening nature of obsession is well depicted and the story is focused and unfolds at a deliberate pace. Noteworthy is the setting itself, a cold and remote clime so that Adele is in isolation from her home, family and friends with little to do or think about every day except her obsession. It is easy to see how something like this can lead to complete madness.

Memorable is a little story within the larger tale, that of the fraudulent hypnotist whom Adele thinks might be able to turn Pinson's indifference into love.

(Note: Over 500 of my movie reviews are now available in my book "Cut to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote!" Get it at Amazon!)