Word: truffauts
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...sine qua non. Once you accept it, the rest of the film follows. And, indeed, the choice has been made before the flim begins--it opens with Adele leaving her home to follow Pinson across the Atlantic to Halifax, (Nova Scotia) already aware of the hopelessness of her love. Truffaut doesn't delve into the really interesting question--the origin of Adele's love--but he doesn't have to. His story is true...
Adele reads aloud from her diaries, and in her diaries creates a fantasy-world in which her love is fulfilled. It was the publishing of these long-forgotten diaries that gave Truffaut the material for this film. For Adele's fate is not that of an ordinary woman--her problems are compounded (and at least partly caused) by her status as the only surviving daughter of Victor Hugo, who enjoyed during his lifetime a world wide reputation as the greatest living poet and champion of liberty. The scene in which Adele's Canadian doctor and her landlady first discover...
...Truffaut's decision to do without the services of Jean-Pierre Leaud for one film, at least, is triumphantly vindicated. Leaud is a wonderful actor in some respects, but he is sui generis; one could no more imagine him in a role in this movie than Woody Allen could have taken a part in, say, Gone With the Wind. Isabel Adjani conveys all the levels of Adele's emotional life, though I suspect that the film might have been more effective if she looked older, more like the thirty she is supposed to be. Adjani manages to epitomize everything French...
Adele's story also turns out to be one of Truffaut's most visually luscious films. Sometimes, Adele is beautiful, though more often she is too concerned with her emotions to care about her looks and her face is tearful and puffy. But the rest of the characters, and all the scenery, is a catalogue of splendor. Truffaut's nineteenth century Halifax is magnificent inside and out, from the lichen-crusted castle battlements to the oak interiors of the houses and the cozy Victorian bookshop. The climax of the film--in Barbados--is more exotic, but here too the emphasis...
This external elegance is paralleled by an elegance of form. Not a shot is wasted. There is no padding, no elongation of emotion to make it seem more profound. Truffaut moves fast, making his points so quickly that there is no time to intellectualize them. Film is as immediate in impact as it should be. The whole burden of Adele's life, complex and important as it is, is summed up in one piece of dialogue. Adele goes to see a British judge whose daughter is engaged to marry the Lieutenant. Adele wants to break up the engagement by hook...