Adoration

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."

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 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.

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 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.