Adorazione

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."

12-year old Paul falls in love for the first time, unfortunately with a violent, abusive and dangerously insane patient from his nurse mother's psychiatric ward. They run off together and tragic events ensue.

This came out of nowhere for me - I'd never heard of it before today and there seems very little written about it online. It's a very tightly made character piece, small in scale but beautifully shot and observed. The two teen leads are faultless and utterly believable at every turn, and we feel both great tenderness and sorrow for Paul's big, bewildered and tragically open heart doing everything he can to follow the logic of Fantine Harduin's chillingly mad (as in "Kill the chicken it is a spy for my uncle" mad) Gloria.

It's a film about trying to save someone who can't be saved, and trying to believe in someone who can't possibly be believed, and the harm to all around that inevitably follows when a well-meaning boy refuses to recognize the monster beside him who he only wants to worship. It can appear a very small story but Adoration tells it very well and much is communicated about the heavy cost of rose-tinted spectacles.

If it has a weakness, I guess maybe it ends a little anticlimacticly, but I also quite like just floating off and leaving them in this way, thinking about Hinkel's soul and the birds. It's enough.

As a doomed young Romeo and Juliet story, it's not in the same class as, say, Let The Right One In, Badlands, Bonnie & Clyde or Harold & Maude, but it put me in mind of all of them a little, and it does occasionally feel like "they don't make 'em like this anymore"

7.5

P.S., the repeating post credits scene - if it is not just a glitch on my copy - seems a puzzling waste of time.

A young boy whose mother works at a nearby asylum comes across a girl recently admitted. He sees her a few times, only to be scolded. Yet tells why she's there is so her family can get a large inheritance she has been left with. The boy aids her escape. And in doing so, cause an accidental death, becoming fugitives. Evading capture, they come by kind strangers, and the boy sees the girl is not mentally sound as he thought. Yet affection keeps him trapped. So not quite as mysterious and horrific as the Swedish classic 'Let The Right One In', this film somewhat follows in it's footsteps. Hard not to feel pity for both the young characters, even as the girl unravels on the poor boy. Especially when they come across kind and unwitting strangers. Unlike Let The Right One In, where I felt a kind of joy that the two would continue on, and he would help her survive. Adoration really left me sad, knowing that the two couldn't go on much longer. But is clever in that it doesn't give full closure. Maybe becoming the next Mickey and Mallory of Natural Born Killers. Or to be soon caught, charged and separated? And the two seem fully aware of either. A strange but sweet coming of age story. And a realistic look at some serious mental illness far beyond Bennie & Joon.

I give any movie i find so compelling a High rating, even though it's kinda forgettable. The acting from the boy was outstanding, such strength of compassion conveyed , despite his seemingly disturbed Mum. The mood and ambient music was enhancing and the connection to nature prominent. There's a great message but it seemed to be put over too obviously, so i suspect i missed something.

The movie begins with a quotation from Boileau -Narcejac ,two writers famous for having written Clouzot's "les diaboliques " and Hitchcock' s "vertigo " .Let's be straight about this : the film has nothing to do with them ,even to the lesser extent , with the possible exception of the would be wicked uncle's setup .

The escape on the river may hint at a teenage "night of the hunter" ,but directing ,which is rather dull does not follow suit .The screenplay is a curate's egg : best thing is the character of the girl :is she that much sincere? Does that uncle who wants to get rid of her and latch onto her heritage really exist (the same goes for the kind grandpa ) ? Does she suffer from paranoia , seeing enemies everywhere from a couple of harmless tourists to a man who might be a pedophile to a simple hen "my uncle's spy" ? Her fits of hysteria may incline the viewer to favor the second hypothesis.

As for the boy, the character is thoroughly plausible in the first sequences : the episode of the wounded bird does not lack poetry or emotion, two qualities which would descends into the banality of the initiation of a virgin lad by an older girl;nevertheless,their relationship ,apart from the expected sex side , is more ambiguous than it appears first : the boy ,every now and then ,is afraid of his mate:perhaps a metaphor for the fear of the first time,most likely some kind of sin with a new Eve who takes her to a paradise (see the last sequences ,superbly filmed ) where a latent menace hangs on them.