Official Synopsis
Set in an Australian seaside town of otherworldly beauty, two women plunge into uncharted waters as they explore the intricacies of love, family, morality and passion.
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The first hour of this film is not unique. You’ve got a ‘forbidden fruit’ set of relationships going on behind two friends’ backs, Lil (Naomi Watts) and Roz (Robin Wright), with each other’s sons. It’s a bit messed up, but it’s something that is certainly predictable once it gets started. You can see that Roz’s marriage is an unhappy one, and one that has lacked passion, so her eventual sexual tiff with Ian (Xavier Samuel) is appropriately planned and executed in the story. Sort of the same situation with Lil and Roz’s son Tom (James Frecheville), but that contains less of a build and seems to be established through a sense of revenge rather than love. On the other hand, Lil’s long departed husband has been keeping her locked up inside, so the sexual encounter with Tom is a release for her, in a sense. All in all, the first hour, while predictable, though it does have a very unique ending to the first act. It is built well by director Anne Fontaine and writer Christopher Hampton, who teeter on the line of good taste and pure passion of the heart. I actually enjoyed the way it wrapped before it got to act two and three.
When the second act starts things get kind of unpredictable and tough to keep up with in the film.
The film fast forwards two years and the lives of the two couples have changed tremendously, though more so for Lil and Tom rather than for Roz and Ian (at least in the immediate future). While I don’t want to give too much away, I think that writer and director were trying to find a different, unpredictable route for this story to end up and sadly what comes out of it is a mess. The stakes get higher in the film, the relationships, while on/off towards the end, begin to spiral out of control until it ends up in one gigantic mess. What started out as a unique and well organized adventure into an odd set of circumstances that show the acceptance between two strongly bonded friends, really tangles itself into a terrible mess without a solid conclusion.
Granted, you knew this wouldn’t end well, but it didn’t deserve to end the way it did.
With half a movie worth watching, the entire movie is worth a go if not only for the performances of the four main characters, especially Naomi Watts and Robin Wright. They give really powerful, beautiful, sexy performances that remind you how great these actors can be in an odd film like this. Loved the leading ladies in this, adored (pun intended) their onscreen chemistry and hope they reunite in a future film together. Maybe Princess Bride 2? Probably not.
Anyway, Adore isn’t a bad film, but it’s a film that really loses its way towards the end. I wish the second half of the film would have had more thought put in it, but it seemed like one of those situations where the first half of the movie seemed satisfactory; the second half just couldn’t compete.
As for the Blu-ray portion of the film the movie really shines. The gorgeous Australian backdrop of the characters private castles by the sea really does lend well to the HD format. Adore is definitely one of the more gorgeous lesser known Blu-rays out there for Paramount, but it appears to have just as much love as the bigger titles released by the studio. There is no graininess and no compression issues. You get a pretty solid transfer with this one.
Sadly, there are no features.
