Cheap The Story of Adele H (DVD) (Isabelle Adjani, Bruce Robinson) (François Truffaut) Price

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A story of obsessive love
Isabelle Adjani plays the title role, that of Adele Hugo, daughter of the great French writer, a woman obsessively in love with an English army lieutenant who doesn't want her. The scene is Halifax, Nova Scotia, during the time of the American Civil War. She has followed Lt. Pinson (Bruce Robinson) from her home in exile on the island of Guernsey to be with him even though he has rejected her. Adjani's sensuous beauty and her intense and passionate nature command the screen and we are drawn to identify with her as she spirals toward madness as her abject pleas of love are unrequited. We watch as she debases herself in every way possible in a desperate attempt to gain Pinson's love, even to the point of giving him to other women. She is psychologically pleased with this because she thinks it shows that her love for him transcends sexuality. Of course the nature of obsessive love is always entirely selfish. If you really love someone who doesn't want you, you have to let them go. But of course she cannot.

Francois Truffaut directed and did a fine job of getting the most out of his young star. The maddening nature of obsession is well depicted and the story is focused and unfolds at a deliberate pace. Noteworthy is the setting itself, a cold and remote clime so that Adele is in isolation from her home, family and friends with little to do or think about every day except her obsession. It is easy to see how something like this can lead to complete madness.

Memorable is a little story within the larger tale, that of the fraudulent hypnotist whom Adele thinks might be able to turn Pinson's indifference into love.

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Its not about love for an Officer
Isabelle Adjani plays an obsessed woman who will go to any length to get the attention of Officer Pinson in the story of Adele H. However, what becomes apparent is it's not he who she is taken with but rather the idea of love and the sacrifice. Truffaut wrote Officer Pinson as an unworthy character to show Adele as a woman who wanted to proclaim the purity of her love. And as the film moves on you begin to feel for the bothered Officer because it becomes a joke really, that she chose him; it could have been anybody, by proving the purity of her heart she can prove her moral superiority to her father Victor Hugo, the most famous man in the world. I enjoyed this film and think its the funniest of Truffauts' films at times because Adele goes all out; there is nothing she will not stoop to and she is extremely devious. The real Adele Hugo was much older when she made this trip across the ocean to Halifax and lived to be 85 years old spending 40 years in an asylum writing in her diary in a secret code, later the diary was discovered in a New York historical library and with much struggle Truffaut brought her story to film. The film has great depth and if you like history and great cinematography you wont be disappointed. The story of Adele H relies on the point of view of one character who is completely strung out and it is a tribute to Truffauts' genius that he was able to pull it off. The film is haunting because it is a conversion narrative about a woman realizing herself in self-destruction. This is a frighteningly intelligent film.

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One of the major achievements of Truffaut!
This is a must in your collection. The charismatic and sideral beauty of Isabelle Adjani enriches itself for her gifted talent as actress .
I don't think in any other actress in that age (with the exception of Shygulla or Jill Claybourgh ) who were capable to win the this defiant performance . This role is hyper difficult and Adjani carries to cosmical levels.
The story turns around the hopeless relation between Adele and a french officer. She leaves everything in France for join him : but the result is useless.
The slow of the progressive madness of Adele is told with such richeness of creative talent , that you wonder why Adjani didn't win the Academy Award with this one.
The picture is perfect in every little detail. A winner and one of the most perfect french films in the seventies.