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Released by: Twilight Time
Released on: May, 2015.
Director: Francois Truffaut
Cast: Isabelle Adjani, Bruce Robinson, Sylvia Marriott, Joseph Blatchley
Year: 1975
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The Movie:
Made in 1975, Francois Truffaut's The Story Of Adí¨le H. tells us, by way of a title card, that this movie is based on a true story. From there, we meet out subject, Adí¨le Huge (Isabel Adjani), the daughter of novelist Victor Hugo. She's a beautiful young woman and, ironically enough, a bit of a compulsive liar - either that or she's at least partially insane.
We catch up with her as she leaves her father for Halifax and learn that she is madly, quite madly in fact, in love with a British officer named Lieutenant Albert Pinson (Bruce Robinson). As her story plays out, we find that that he was, at one point in time, just as obsessed with her as she is with him. That didn't last. His marriage proposal wound up meaning nothing and since then he's been more than preoccupied with other women. This doesn't stop Adí¨le from checking into a boarding house under a fake name so that she can be closer to her beloved. She writes him love letters with a frightening compulsion but he ignores them.
When she finally does meet him face to face he tries his best to push her away. He cares for her but he knows that for whatever reason, Adí¨le is broken and cannot be fixed by him or by anyone else. Adí¨le brushes this off, like she's brushed everything else off, because of course he loves her, and she'll keep trying to convince him of that. When this turns out to be an impossible task, she stalks him and goes so far as to meddle in his relationships with other women. If that weren't enough, she even tries to talk a hypnotist into using his abilities to get Pinson to marry her. It goes very much downhill, in some ways at least, from there.
How much of what happens here really happened to the Adí¨le Hugo who walked this Earth as a flesh and blood person is probably debatable but Truffaut, being Truffaut, manages to turn all of this into a movie that is a fascinating character study. Front and center in all of this, and key to the film's success, is the stunningly beautiful Adjani. She plays Adí¨le with the right mix of eerie obsessiveness and young naiveté, so that the character is more than one dimensional. Truffaut lets the audience decide how much of what we see her doing is legitimized by what she's going through for ourselves, never really delving too deep into what were likely some very real mental problems causing her to behave as she does. Adjani handles all of this perfectly. She's beautiful enough that you have no trouble whatsoever understanding why Pinson would have initially fallen for her, but when she lets her persona start to crack, so too do we understand exactly why he'd flee. She's also amazingly fragile and in many ways, a complete innocent.
Bruce Robinson is also very good here. He is at first dashing and handsome but then, as things get back with Adí¨le, he understandably opts to care for her from a distance. We never get the impression, through his performance at least, that he doesn't have any feelings for her but rather than he simply cannot deal with the way she behaves. He cannot realistically be what she wants him to be and it hurts him, but he has to do what he has to do. All of this gives Robinson the opportunity to play a character full of conflict and he does so quite well and with an impressive sense of maturity.
The film is beautifully shot and it features a great score. So too does it occasionally work in some twisted but deliberate humor. The use of color sometimes reflects this but much of the movie, stylistically, is appropriately dark. The end result is a film that deals with madness without ever going insane and it's fascinating, if not always a pleasure, to watch. Love makes people do strange things…
Video/Audio/Extras:
The Story Of Adele H. arrives on Blu-ray from Twilight Time, framed in its proper 1.66.1 widescreen aspect ratio in an AVC encoded 1080p high definition transfer on a 50GB disc. Some shots do look a little softer than others but for the most part the image here is quite strong in detail, texture and depth. Colors are reproduced very nicely, though there is a bit of fading in some spots, while the black levels tend to be pretty strong. Skin tones look nice and lifelike and the picture is clean and clear and free of all but minor print damage. There are no issues with noise reduction or compression issues and this is quite a solid looking transfer of a very beautifully shot film.
The French/English language DTS-HD Mono track is also quite good. It has more depth than most single channel tracks do and the dialogue sounds quite natural and properly mixed in against the score. This isn't a particularly effects heavy track so Mono works just fine. The score has good range and presence to it and there are no problems with any hiss or distortion. Forced English subtitles are provided automatically during the French language sequences, and there's also the option to have English closed captioning provided over the English audio portions if you want too.
The main extra on the disc is an audio commentary with film historians Julie Kirgo and Nick Redman who, as always, make for a good commentary team. They talk about the truth behind Adí¨le Hugo's story and how it translates to Truffaut's adaptation as seen here. They also offer up plenty of trivia about the cast, the director, the locations and the score. It's a well thought out critical analysis of the film mixed with the right amount of scene specific trivia.
Aside from that we get an Isolated Score Track in DTS-HD format, the film's original theatrical trailer, static menus and chapter selection. Kirgo also contributes an essay contained in the insert booklet that is tucked away inside the Blu-ray case. Worth a read as always as they explain the history of the production and offer some thoughts as to what makes this movie as interesting as it is.
The Final Word:
Twilight Time give Truffaut's The Story Of Adí¨le H. a very fine Blu-ray debut. The transfer is of very good quality and the audio quite fine. Top it off with a nice commentary and a few other extras and it's easy to recommend this one to fans of either Truffaut or the lovely Isabel Adjani. It's not a cheery film by any stretch but it's very, very well done.
Click on the images below for full sized Blu-ray screen caps!
