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'The Age of Adaline' A predictable tale, saved by great acting
Immortal: Adaline (center) hesitates to developg a serious relationship with any man after the death of her first husband
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Immortal:: Adaline (center) hesitates to developg a serious relationship with any man after the death of her first husband. (Courtesy of Lionsgate) (center) hesitates to developg a serious relationship with any man after the death of her first husband. (Courtesy of Lionsgate)
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span class="inline inline-center">Immortal: Adaline (center) hesitates to developg a serious relationship with any man after the death of her first husband. (Courtesy of Lionsgate)
It was the 1960s. The era of the flower power generation and a time when it seemed that autumn lasted all throughout the year. On a bench somewhere in San Francisco sat a young William Jones (Anthony Ingruber).
Jones held in his hand a ring. He was readying himself to propose to the love of his life, Adaline Bowman (Blake Lively). But she never came.
Fast forward to 2015, an older Jones (Harrison Ford) has now been happily married with Kathy (Kathy Baker) for 40 years. They are about to meet their son, Ellis (Michiel Huisman), and his new girlfriend, Jenny.
When Jones sees Jenny, he is shocked that she looks exactly like Adaline. To Jones, Jenny explains that Adaline was her mother, and that she had died six years earlier.
That is not, however, the truth.
Jenny is in fact Adaline, the main character of the romantic film, The Age of Adaline, directed by Lee Toland Krieger.
The film tells the story of Adaline, who was born in San Francisco on New Year's day in 1908, as she battles a condition that does not allow her to grow old. The condition began after a freak accident when she was 29 years old.
The accident, which almost took her life, took away any ability of her body to age. During the early decades, Adaline thought that her youthful look was made possible by her healthy lifestyle, but eventually, as her son Flemming (Ellen Burstyn) looked more and more older than she did, she realized that something was wrong.
Due to Adaline's youthful look, she constantly drew the suspicion of law enforcers. When she was 45, a police officer thought she had forged her identity and not long after, she was being hunted by the FBI as they suspected that she was working for the communists as she did not have a proper identification card.
Realizing that this attention from the authorities might endanger Flemming, Adaline decided to move from place to place every 10 years, each time changing her identity.
In depicting over a century of Adaline's life, Krieger uses a lot of back-and-forth between scenes from the past and the present in his storytelling. In addition, and a little weirdly, there is an occassional third-person narrative telling viewers of events from Adaline's life.
Throughout her life, Adaline never tells a single soul about her condition, except for Flemming. Her condition also discourages her from developing a serious relationship with any man after the death of her first husband.
Adaline has long been running away from men, including Jones, whom she loves too much to lose. To develop some sort of a concrete relationship other than the one with Flemming, Adaline has been keeping the same breed of dog as a pet for decades. She also befriends Regan (Lynda Boyd), a blind musician who cannot see her eternally youthful looks.
A twist of fate then leads Adaline to cross paths again with Ellis, the son of the man she used to love so dearly. Ellis is a multibillionaire math genius who made his fortune selling the patent for his economic prediction formula who now occupies his time spending his fortune on preserving and restoring San Francisco's historical sites.
Ellis' humility, wit and humor captivate Adaline, who is at least 80 years his senior. Adaline's meeting with Ellis, and eventually, her reunion with Jones, forces her to confront a dilemma ' should she run away again or should she just stop and learn how to truly love again?
In terms of story and presentation, there is nothing particularly special about The Age of Adaline. It carries the same clichés that are often found in films that deal with immortality and death, including the pain of seeing loved ones getting older and passing away and the question of whether immortality is a blessing or a curse. These issues and questions have been covered before in films of this theme.
Krieger also fails to properly capture the various different periods of Adaline's life. Despite his best efforts to bring together vintage looking costumes and props, the past events of Adaline's life always have that modern feel about them.
Despite these setbacks, Ford and Lively help a lot to improve the film's overall quality with their superb performances.
Ford perfectly portrays the devastation on Jones' face when he sees Adaline as Jenny for the first time. The fragility of Jones' soul as he walks down memory lane, reliving moments with Adaline, is delivered with a captivating performance by Ford, who could be said to have given his best acting performance in decades.
Lively, despite giving a quite dull performance in the early part of the film, picks up the pace after her character's reunion with Jones.
While Adaline's depiction of an independent, strong woman felt a bit forced early on, Lively successfully develops her character, becoming more captivating and sincere toward the end of the film.
As a love story, The Age of Adaline is a dull presentation, featuring too much predictable cliche, which leaves the film, despite its quite interesting premise, feeling a bit bland. However, at the end of the day, it is the performances of its main characters that save the film.
