That was an excellent one.

Thanks for the memories!

hyped garbage

A brilliant film that helped define a genre

The real story of Adèle Hugo, Victor Hugo's youngest daughter, played by a yet-to-be 20-year-old Isabelle Adjani, whose one-sided infatuation to a British officer, Lieutenant Albert Pinson (Robinson), drives her to leave her family and come to Halifax alone, where he is stationed, only to be subjected to more stern rejection from Pinson, eventually she loses her sanity in Barbados and is sent back to her father, she lives until 1915 at the age of 85.Truffaut strong-willedly mines into the absurdity and irrationality of unrequited love evinced from Adèle's own diaries, and beats about the bush about Adèle's mental faculties at then, as at first viewers may get a vague idea that she is a congenital liar and her obsession could be completely derived from her imagination. But soon Pinson's visit clears the suspicion, he actually did be romantically linked with her, but presently he doesn't want anything to do with her, but he never gives an explanation, another sly bullet-dodging of revealing the speculative truth, since, understandably, you can not find that in one's own diaries. So, Adèle's torment, is simultaneously inflicted by Pinson's heartless rebuff and by her own deep-rooted delusion, it always takes two to tango, that's where lies the frustrating perverseness of the little destructive thing called love.The film is Adjani's star-making vehicle, she harrowingly lays bare Adèle's severely troubled soul on top of her ethereal beauty, and marvelously characterizes her vulnerability and paranoia, which are much beyond her age and experiences, and she laudably earns an Oscar nomination for her prowess. Credits should also be given to Bruce Robinson's portrayal of the obnoxiously uppity, narcissistic and self-serving Albert Pinson, who can mercilessly spurn Adjani's Adèle, a nonpareil belle who only wants to be loved by him, it is a rather surreal and idealistic role, and Robinson indeed makes a dent of his own effort notwithstanding that the movie has never focused on him, it is purely a showcase for the young Adjani.Adèle's tragedy is a rich kid's blues, living under the shadow of her world-known father and sibling rivalry, she pestered by the incubus of her late sister Léopoldine's drowning accident, and quintessentially, her relentless pursuit of love and marriage is a desperate attempt to imitate Léopoldine's short but fulfilled life, in Adèle's recount, the husband of Léopoldine voluntarily dies with her, that is something she needs to possess, to prove her own worth, after all, it is not about Pinson at all, which is emphatically captured by the final encounter between them.Like the illusionist (Gitlis) in the picture, our world is populated with deceptions and play-actings, and THE STORY OF ADELE H (it must be where Noah Baumbach's FRANCES HA 2012 gets its titular inspiration), further vouches for Truffaut's will power to debunk the ugly truth in his works, only this time, let it get brutally emotional under a often sombre palette from the one-and-only Néstor Almendros and incited by a compelling tour-de-force from Ms. Adjani.

The first time I saw this film (twenty years ago) the thing that impressed me the most was Isabelle Adjani's portrayal of Adele, the natural way in which she conveyed her character's emotions. Seeing it again recently, I was able to better appreciate the film's fine crafting. One can sense Truffaut's hand in the direction, even if it seems a bit different and less complex than other films of his. However, I found this one to be the most haunting of all the Truffaut films I saw. It skillfully depicts Adele's circumstances and her torment without turning into a sentimental melodrama. As her desperation grows, so do her actions turn more and more irrational and outrageous. Yet, there is something about Adele that makes one understand her and feel for her. I credit that to Adjani's talent and the director's vision.The final scene punched me emotionally and spoke volumes without any of the characters uttering a word to each other: Adele, her mind lost by now, passing by Lt. Pinson without even recognizing him - so consumed with her obsession and grief for her lost love that she forgot who was the cause of her torment. In a way, all she remembered was not Pinson himself, but the idea of being with him.I think this film is an interesting psychological study. In spite of its character's tragism, it doesn't try to be morally conclusive or emotionally manipulative. Adele seems to be a victim, but is she a victim of another's insensitivity, a victim of circumstances, or a victim of her own emotional instability? Or, is she a victim at all?Maybe that's why the film elicits such a lasting impression: it leaves enough for the viewers to think about and digest afterwards, and eventually to draw their own conclusions.

This is an incredibly sad movie to watch because you know that Adele was a REAL person who lived an incredibly screwed up and sad life. She was completely wrapped up in her dream of marrying a British soldier--so much that she followed him across the Atlantic, tells her parents she married him (after he repeatedly refused to do so) and planned the details of her life around this obsession. Slowly, she moves from a form of Obsessive-Compulsive disorder to Schizophrenia and it is especially apparent in the last portion of the movie.I really liked Isabelle Adjani's acting--she and the director (Truffaut) really pulled you into her world and it seemed quite poignant. However, the treatment of her love (who was completely indifferent to her) seemed rather superficial. Despite the pains she put him through, his emotional range in response to this MINIMAL and this is the biggest drawback in the movie. However, as the movie is HER story and this is handled so well, I still give the movie a 9. It could have gotten a 10 if it explored him better and if it explained WHY Adele's famous father (Victor Hugo) did so little to stop her on her self-destructive decline. He only acted once she was undeniably mad.

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.