robert-temple-1 This is a true story about Adèle Hugo, the younger daughter of the famous 19th century French author Victor Hugo (1802-1885, best known today as the author of LES MISERABLES, which is causing an even greater stir now that the musical show has been filmed and nominated for several Oscars). She was named after her mother, who was also called Adèle. This is a passionate and intensely tragic tale which is well known to all cultured French people over the age of forty, who were educated in the days before the French education system collapsed into a pile of wreckage even more shattered than the rubble of the British and American education systems. (No French young person today who has not made extra effort even knows the names of the famous French authors and poets of the 20th century, much less their works, apart from the noxious and revolting Sartre, whose poisonous influence lives on like an ineradicable invasion of Japanese knotweed, choking all the good plants around it to death.) In this film, the 20 year-old Isabelle Adjani gives the performance of her life, a harrowing, wholly compelling and convincing study of a disturbed girl who goes from obsessive love into detachment from reality and thence into total madness. The real Adèle was by no means beautiful, as the photos of her exhibited recently at the Victor Hugo House in the Marais in Paris make clear. Adjani, on the other hand, is ravishing, and how the vain and narcissistic Lieutenant Pinson whom she adores can resist her is the only weakness to the film. The causes of Adèle's madness will never be entirely comprehended, as it was all too long ago (in the 1860s), but Francois Truffaut, who directed this miniature masterwork, hints at her being obsessively haunted by the death from drowning of her beautiful older sister Leopoldine at the age of 19. We see scenes of Adjani writhing in agony in her bed, in the grip of nightmares, calling out that they must not continue to keep Leopoldine's clothes preserved in her trunk at home. Is Adèle afraid of drowning? Is she touched by the terror of death? Does she feel suffocated by the fame of her father? Did she pick up from her father, as if by contagion, his own obsessive grief at Leopoldine's death? Or was she just born to madness? We shall doubtless never know. But having been seduced by the French Lieutenant (and this presumably also inspired THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT'S WOMAN by John Fowles) and having given herself to him, 'by giving my body I give also my soul, and it is forever'. The guilt and, according to her faith, the sin, of allowing herself to be defiled in the flesh seems to have contributed to the resultant mania. Adèle then becomes manically fixated upon Lieutenant Pinson and follows him across the Atlantic to Halifax in Nova Scotia here his 16th Hussars have been stationed, and later still to the Island of Barbados in the Caribbean to which the Hussars were transferred. She thus became a primordial stalker, whose masochistic tendencies extended as far as paying a prostitute to go to Pinson, with a note to him saying it is with her compliments 'because you deserve all women'. As a study in female psychology gone wrong, they don't come more intense than this. Can one really blame the heartless Pinson for finding his cast-off mistress to be 'trouble' and wanting to escape her? Which came first, the casting-off or the mania? We do not know that either, nor will anyone. The film is made in a claustrophobic manner, with subdued colour, confined sets, and a darkness reminiscent of that found in all of Victor Hugo's own paintings, which lack all sunlight, and are extraordinarily gloomy, just as gloomy, in fact, as his house in Paris, with its dark 'Chinese Room' and even darker inner chambers, culminating in his funereal bedroom at the back. No wonder Victor Hugo's last words on his deathbed were: 'I see a black light!' This film is a searing emotional experience, largely because of Adjani's incredible performance, where one forgets entirely that she is Adjani and believes one is in the presence of the demented Adèle herself, robed in all her despair and bespangled with the glittering hopelessness of a mind which is disintegrating like an atom in a cyclotron, all before our horrified eyes. Truffaut made a quiet masterpiece, one which has all the qualities of Edvard Munch's silent 'Scream'. By way of epilogue I might say that there is an Adèle Hugo alive today, and she even has a charming sister named Leopoldine, who did not drown at the age of 19 but is still very much alive. They are great-grandchildren of Victor Hugo, two of the seven children (two sons and five daughters) of the famous French 20th century artist Jean Hugo by his second wife (he had no children by his first wife, also a famous French artist, Valentine Hugo, whose maiden name was Gross). And so the names live on and the family lives on, trailing their traditions and their creative works behind them in their collective wake like a convoy of ships which drops buoys to mark its route across the troublous seas of creativity.

evening1 Did anyone else think Pinson intended to kill Adele on that Barbados back street, until he realized that he had finally driven her insane? Bruce Robinson plays the wormy cad to a T, but amazing kudos go to Adjani, as the deeply suffering heart of what Truffaut dubbed his "love story for one." I realize that Adele was an obsessive, masochistic, lying stalker. But she also suffered from the vicarious trauma of her sister's drowning in addition to probably having a tendency toward mental illness. What a case study in the truism that money can't buy you love!Let's not trivialize this great film by reducing it to a "fatal attraction" for the 19th century. What woman hasn't found herself in the position of having given herself to a man only to be callously cast aside?Truffaut beautifully captures the ineffable helplessness of being in this excruciating position.I first saw this film back in 1975 as an undergraduate at Penn State, while majoring in English. I remember telling a poet friend, "I wish I wrote as much as Adele did!" I'd like to believe I have aged as admirably as this powerful work.

Michael_Elliott 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.

jcappy Guilt or Passion? 8 Is guilt or passion the driving force behind Adele's obsession for Lt Pinson? I think the former. Maybe it's her re-current dreams of her older sister's tragic death by drowning, maybe it's her conscious guilt over that accident--she wished it because this sister was her father's dear favorite---but for me it's her ENIGMATIC SMILE while viewing her beloved's sexual encounter and her subsequent gift of a prostitute which argue even more deeply for guilt.For how can deep passion cut itself off from the body without abstracting itself? If her love was real, concrete, it was embodied. At that SMILE'S precise moment, passion/love must become guilt/penitence. Or, if this love started with guilt/penitence and Pinson is simply a stand-in for her dead sister, than all that can be left now is suffering. Because it is now brutally clear that the love she seeks--to heal her guilt--has been denied. The physical bond is severed. Pinson has stripped Adele of her body--and thus of her key to response. Now guilt has killed passion and has shut down possibility. Only suffering remains, and Adele's downward spiral into self-destruction has begun. Pinson's cold indifference, selfishness, and womanizing are now mere penance, which she can only passively endure. She may survive--and does, but not as a lover, saint or mystic.