The Story of Adele H. (1975)

Too much of everything

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Story of Adele H, The (1975)*** (out of 4) Isabelle Adjani picked up an Academy Award nomination for her performance of Victor Hugo's second daughter Adele who follows Lt. Pinson (Bruce Robinson) to Halifax where her obsession with him quickly turns to madness. We follow Adele as she first arrives in Halifax and tries to get the man to marry her but when he refuses we see her continue various attempts in getting what she wants but each time these attempts just become more outlandish. THE STORY OF ADELE H appears to get fairly mixed reviews. Some call it a masterpiece and one of the director's best works while others call it cold and forgettable. I guess I'm in the middle because I thought the film was terrific to look at and we also get a great performance by Adjani but in the end it was just impossible for me to connect with this character or care a bit about her. There's no denying that this is an incredible film to look at as director Truffaut does a marvelous job in capturing the mood and look of the 1860s. No matter what was happening on the screen I simply couldn't take my eyes off the costumes, sets and even the buildings. There's one very quick sequence where Adele is walking through a snowstorm and passes out. Even the look of the snow was rather hypnotizing to and beautifully shot. Truffaut takes his time telling the story and this actually builds up a pretty good atmosphere and the way he reveals the woman's obsession and how he shows it turning into this craziness is picked up very well with the slower pace. Adjani certainly deserves all the praise because she's simply divine no matter what personality she's playing. There's a scene early in the movie where she's staying at a house and the soldier comes to visit her. The way Adjani goes from normal to mad in the matter of seconds was extremely believable and there wasn't a false move by her anywhere in the film. The supporting players fit their parts well, although no one really stands out. The one flaw I had with the film was the fact that I never really connected to Adele nor did I ever really begin to feel for her. The only thing that kept me connected to her was knowing she was the daughter of Victor Hugo who of course is a legend. If this had been anyone else in the world then it's doubtful I would have connected to her for anything. The film is still worth viewing if you're a fan of the director but in terms of his career I'd say this isn't nearly his best work.

Truffaut is usually such a high-spirited filmmaker that The Story of Adele H. comes as a great surprise. Isabelle Adjani plays a woman obsessed with a man who has no interest in her. Ultimately she convinces herself that she is in the middle of a great romance and loses touch with reality. By the end of the film she doesn't even recognize her great love anymore, since he exists far more in her mind than he ever has in her experiences. The daughter of Victor Hugo, Adele H. is desperate to create a life apart from her family, and she fixates on her imaginary love affair as her salvation. It's an odd, dark story, and Truffaut takes a determinedly direct approach to it, sacrificing some of the liveliness and cinematic flashiness of his other films but more than making up for it with a sharper focus and intensity. Adjani is brilliant. She makes no effort to win our sympathy or milk us for the pathos inherent in her situation, and the clean, even stark single-mindedness of her acting begins to take on a harsh grandeur as the film goes along. Though far from the most characteristic Truffaut film, this is one of his best.

Summary: A talented writer, Adele Hugo, becomes obsessed with her former lover , the indebted and womanizing Liutenant Pinson. Her love for him consumes her entire life and she eventually goes crazy because he doesn't love her back.Acting: Except for Adjani's performance, the acting is not very good, but that doesn't matter too much because the only person with a large role is Adjani. The guy who plays Pinson is pretty one dimensional. Anyway though, Adjani gives an Oscar-worthy performance, and balances her character's vigorously muscular and blunt aggression with her character's silky-fine desperation and entrapment. Another actress might have played Adele as being recklessly obsessed, but Adjani doesn't do that. Adjani actually shows us the thoughts and rationality of her character; we first see Adele as an intelligent, innocent young woman who somehow, some way, becomes slimmed down to a stub of passion in Pinson's presence. Cinematography: bland and bleak, which works in a way because that's how Adele views the world in comparison to her own out-of-proportion sadness, but also doesn't work because that's all it does: show us how the world looks like to Adele. I would have preferred if the cinematography actually captured the different emotions Adele was going through in each scene, it would have made the cinematography less one-note. This flaw in the cinematography unfortunately carries over to the overall tone of the film. Script: Good. It definitely conveys how Adele is always trying, with a passion so great it verges on the comical, to form the confusion of her life into a solid piece of truth. Part of this passion seems to be part of her neuroses; part of it seems to be the artist in her at work.The one flaw in the script was the voice over at the end: it didn't really give you a good idea of the rest of Adele's life, and I bet the writer put it in there because he thought, " Whoa, this script is pretty long. I'd better gloss over the later years of Adele's life." Costume design: Adele's red dress seems appropriately color-coded with the cinematography of the film, which, as I stated above, isn't such a good thing. Nothing else besides that red dress stuck out at me, and the rest of the costume design was pretty mediocre. Camera-work: Very good. I particularly like the slow zoom-in on the picture of Pinson, it was very powerful. Another good camera-work choice was when Pinson realized that Adele had told her father that she and Pinson were getting married. The director filmed this scene with the door blocking half the screen, which made the viewer feel, like Adele, very cut off from Pinson. I really liked the camera-work here, actually. Music: Powerful and fitting. I particularly liked the music when Pinson was walking towards Adele at the end. Overall: Very good film mainly carried by Adjani's excellent performance.

F. Truffautt said that Adele H is about a"face",the beautiful face of Adjani.The indomitable Adele seems to love to much,her passion and intensity proves of how dangerous a "love obsession" could be. Adjani performance sometimes is very disturbing,and she really shines as this dark,genuine,amazing young woman,Adele H is not the most popular of Truffautt movies ,but IMHO is his most solid work,you don't need to be his "fan" to appreciate it.