Adoration

Paul and his mother move to her new workplace, a high end psychiatric hospital. He falls for beautiful disturbed patient Gloria who convinces him to help her escape. It starts with a deadly incident and gets ever more dangerous.

For men, the crazy beauty ratio is very real and there is plenty of both in Gloria. I totally get Paul's motivation and dilemma but at some point, he has to man up. The two young leads are good. They are able to maintain intrigue in this relatively simple young tragic romance.

I would have seen this film without knowing the director's name, i would have guessed this was a Fabrice Du Welz creation. You find in this beautiful and eerie movie all the ingredients he puts in nearly every of his films. the deep depiction of the inner human soul, the dark side of the man's spirit. This director is a very sensitive man always at one hundred percent involved in each of his films. A very dedicated film maker and certainly not a simple yes man. Bewitching, poisonous, hypnotic the three words that describe the best the films of this awesome free director.

A very well-written story (three screenwriters), in which a teenager, Thomas Gioria, who lives in autarky with his mother, works in a psychiatric hospital, where he meets a new resident, Fantine Harduin, who turns his life upside down. She will provoke the adoration of the title: he is fascinated by this young girl.

Fabrice du Welz brilliantly composes atmospheric sequences, at times suspended in mid-air, with very rough and violent scenes, interspersed throughout a journey undertaken by our two lovers. Most of their journey takes place on the water, during which they meet a variety of characters. Their final encounter is decisive for the rest of the story. Among the people they meet is a character played by Benoit Poelvoorde, who makes a short but powerful and memorable appearance, also in suspension and on edge.

A beautiful film and a curiosity.

I haven't seen other films by this director, but I'll be sure to. I'm thoroughly pleased with this one - poetic, unintrusive, but unsparing. Subtle in its approach and daring as it deals with psychopathy in children. It evokes great performances from its main protagonists; and another actress strikingly reminded me of the one from Spoorloos (The Vanishing).

Given the film is eerie, visual and intuitive, I don't know why iMDB needs me to add many more words. I may throw in some of the heroine's: "They are snakes and pigs. They want to hurt me. So you will not abandon me? I will love you then."

It looks nice. But it's the same tone from beginning to end, so becomes visually boring very quickly.

The acting is just ok - incredibly earnest with lots of 'emoting' going on to fill the vast distances between plot points or intrigue.

The story is a fairly typical young love drama. Our boy is inexperienced and because of this, he devotes himself to 'rescuing' our girl who is, like, totally crazy man. She's like, totally in an institution and the bad doctors give her sedatives and stuff. And then she y'know, like, says crazy things. She's like sooo crazy.

The writing of her character is unforgiveably weak. The boy slackens his jaw and gawps at her for most of the runtime. The film plods along predictably until it stubs its toe on the ending, which is neither tragic enough nor dramatic enough to matter. In fact, the ending is where the story should have begun. Everything up until that point could have been covered in two minutes.

Tedious, thematically transparent, metaphorically barren and in love with itself. Guff.