The Story of Adele H

Francoise Truffaut’s The Story of Adele H chronicles the descent into madness of Adele Hugo, daughter Les Miserables author Victor Hugo.  While exiled to the (British) island of Guernsey, Adele fell in love with a seducer named Albert Pinson, a lieutenant in the British Army.  When Pinson’s regiment transferred to Nova Scotia, Adele followed.  When it transferred to Barbados, Adele followed.  She simply refused to believe that the man she’d fallen for had not, in fact, fallen for her.  She broke with reality and wound up in a madhouse.  So, kids, there’s your night out at the movies.

Isabelle Adjani, as Adele, is a fine actress who performs creditably in the title role.  Her very casting, however, struck me as a misstep that created a barrier to my suspension of disbelief.  You see, Adjani ranks among the most beautiful women of her generation – not “interesting beautiful,” but “Greco-Roman statue beautiful.”  I simply could not imagine any young man, particularly one so saddled with debt as Pinson was at the time, passing on the opportunity to marry a woman both so beautiful and so wealthy as Adele Hugo.  I particularly couldn’t imagine an ambitious young British Army officer of the 19^th Century refusing such an opportunity.  Ms. Hugo’s beauty, wealth, and connections would have made a star of her husband at a time when a man could climb the promotion ladder simply by purchasing higher-ranking commissions and being generally regarded as a “good fellow.”  Even knowing that The Story of Adele H was based on the historical record, I think I may have had an easier time of becoming lost in the narrative had its protagonist been somehow more average.

Still, this is an engrossing film.  Though its pacing feels anything but brisk, Adjani is so watchable (and so well-photographed) that we can’t turn away from her descent from romantic to obsessive to lunatic.  The Story of Adele H is one worth seeing.

Breathless

Ok, I get it. I'm a terrible, bad person. I have no taste. I'm a vulgarian: the guy who shot off the Sphinx's nose.

BREATHLESS bored the hell out of me.

There were all these things about it that I know I was supposed to appreciate: the innovative use of jump cuts, the romantic amorality of its leads, its impact on cinema history. But the movie lost me the moment Jean-Paul Belmondo shot the cop, and that was only something like five minutes in. From there, I felt trapped as the spectator who watches a man fritter away his remaining moments of freedom. Not only did I want him to get caught because I wanted the son of a bitch to get what was coming to him, I wanted him to get caught because I knew that was the only way the film could (mercifully) end.

But this is an important film. It's the kind of film people study in school. It's one of those movies that taught the Boomers how to be cool. I understand that it's important, but I'm not in school, I'm not a Boomer, and I'm already cool.

Having said that, I'm open to the possibility that there's more there, that this is a film that can improve with study. Perhaps they'll offer a class in it when I wind up at Leisure World a few decades hence. Until then, this film represents only another Classic checked off the list.