A História de Adèle H.

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!

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.

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.

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!)

Thirty years later it is hard to imagine "The Story of Adele H" without the then twenty-year old Isabelle Adjani as the title character. But at the time Truffaut's decision to cast the young French theatre star was very risky. Not because there was any doubt about Adjani's acting, but because casting someone who was arguably the most beautiful actress in the world as a character driven mad by unrequited love raised a potential credibility issue. Would viewers believe that the advances of a woman so beautiful, passionate, and intelligent were rejected? And could someone like that elicit sympathy from the average viewer.

But Truffaut knew what he was doing because Adjani's Adele Hugo is 100% convincing. And rather than going for audience sympathy they go for audience frustration as the viewer is increasingly exasperated over Adele's self-destructive behavior. Adjani's breathtaking beauty actually is an asset as Truffaut wants us convinced that the world holds open unlimited possibilities for Adele if only see can let go of her obsession. Adjani plays the character with such intensity that you are finally relieved when Adele's madness has reached the stage where she is no longer aware of her own suffering.

Apparently Adele Hugo (Victor Hugo's daughter) had other issues going on well before her obsessive quest for Lt. Pinson's love began. Her sister had drowned and her parents had always strongly favored the sister over Adele. She has recurrent nightmares about drowning and sees marriage to Pinson as the only way to escape from her father. Visually, Truffaut's stays with blacks, browns and blues; with much of each frame filled with shadows; not exactly dreary but consistent with a character who has found little non-fantasy happiness during her life.

The camera loves Adjani, a good thing as she is on screen for over 90% of the film. She was the youngest nominee ever for best actress. It was the best performance of the 1970's, probably no one but Adjani could have conveyed such inner emotional violence. It is that extremely rare visual performance that does not need subtitles or even sound.

As Roger Ebert noted: "Truffaut finds a certain nobility in Adele. He quotes one of the passages in her diaries twice: She writes that she will walk across the ocean to be with her lover. He sees this, not as a declaration of love, but as a statement of a single-mindedness so total that a kind of grandeur creeps into it. Adele was mad, yes, probably - but she lived her life on such a vast and romantic scale that it's just as well Pinson never married her. He would have become a disappointment".