L'histoire d'Adèle H.

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.

Brilliant for the precise description of a very subtle frame of mind. Adele's ways are not obsession's expressions, not love or ambition. It is only necessity to live, to be, to build a sense without the protective father's shadow.

And Adjani is charming in a great character who engrosses audience's energy. It is a desire's story but not only desire. It is a cruel adventure, mixed madness and ambition, Emma Bovary world's slices, fear and expectation and an absurd fight.

It is a grotesque Don Quixote's story with oily nuances. Story of propriety like existence's purpose. The dream like escape and the rules like useless convention. In fact,a strange illustration of "Beyond Good and Evil".

A beautiful film about desire's monstrosity,helplessness, misunderstanding,misfortune, illusion's honey and feeling's corpse.

The real story of Adèle Hugo, Victor Hugo's youngest daughter, played by a yet-to-be 20-year-old Isabelle Adjani, whose one-sided infatuation to a British officer, Lieutenant Albert Pinson (Robinson), drives her to leave her family and come to Halifax alone, where he is stationed, only to be subjected to more stern rejection from Pinson, eventually she loses her sanity in Barbados and is sent back to her father, she lives until 1915 at the age of 85.

Truffaut strong-willedly mines into the absurdity and irrationality of unrequited love evinced from Adèle's own diaries, and beats about the bush about Adèle's mental faculties at then, as at first viewers may get a vague idea that she is a congenital liar and her obsession could be completely derived from her imagination. But soon Pinson's visit clears the suspicion, he actually did be romantically linked with her, but presently he doesn't want anything to do with her, but he never gives an explanation, another sly bullet-dodging of revealing the speculative truth, since, understandably, you can not find that in one's own diaries. So, Adèle's torment, is simultaneously inflicted by Pinson's heartless rebuff and by her own deep-rooted delusion, it always takes two to tango, that's where lies the frustrating perverseness of the little destructive thing called love.

The film is Adjani's star-making vehicle, she harrowingly lays bare Adèle's severely troubled soul on top of her ethereal beauty, and marvelously characterizes her vulnerability and paranoia, which are much beyond her age and experiences, and she laudably earns an Oscar nomination for her prowess. Credits should also be given to Bruce Robinson's portrayal of the obnoxiously uppity, narcissistic and self-serving Albert Pinson, who can mercilessly spurn Adjani's Adèle, a nonpareil belle who only wants to be loved by him, it is a rather surreal and idealistic role, and Robinson indeed makes a dent of his own effort notwithstanding that the movie has never focused on him, it is purely a showcase for the young Adjani.

Adèle's tragedy is a rich kid's blues, living under the shadow of her world-known father and sibling rivalry, she pestered by the incubus of her late sister Léopoldine's drowning accident, and quintessentially, her relentless pursuit of love and marriage is a desperate attempt to imitate Léopoldine's short but fulfilled life, in Adèle's recount, the husband of Léopoldine voluntarily dies with her, that is something she needs to possess, to prove her own worth, after all, it is not about Pinson at all, which is emphatically captured by the final encounter between them.

Like the illusionist (Gitlis) in the picture, our world is populated with deceptions and play-actings, and THE STORY OF ADELE H (it must be where Noah Baumbach's FRANCES HA 2012 gets its titular inspiration), further vouches for Truffaut's will power to debunk the ugly truth in his works, only this time, let it get brutally emotional under a often sombre palette from the one-and-only Néstor Almendros and incited by a compelling tour-de-force from Ms. Adjani.

A genuine horror film of the spirit---the filmmaking is excellent and a bit of a thematic departure for Truffaut as there is little to no leavening humour in this film. In most of his works there is at least a touch of ironic drollness but this film is basically serious-minded all the way through with devastating results.

"Haunting" is the best way to describe Adjani's work in this, one of her first film appearances. Her best moments are wordless; in her eyes is the essense of spiritual dissipation and emotional emaciation. Before our eyes, she is devoured by love, and not in the conventional sense. Without the film ever leaving the secular world, Adele Hugo descends to Hell and Truffaut finds the horror of her journey in the most mundane settings and gestures. A movie that stays with you.

A lacerating but very rewarding experience!

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.