L’Histoire d’Adèle H. (1975)

Directed by François Truffaut. Starring Isabelle Adjani, Bruce Robinson, Sylvia Marriott, Joseph Blatchley, Cecil de Sausmarez, Ruben Dorey, Ivry Gitlis, Roger Martin, Louise Bourdet, Clive Gillingham, Madame Louise. [PG]

Adjani’s breakthrough role as Adèle Hugo, youngest daughter of writer Victor Hugo, obsessively in love with British soldier Robinson despite his consistent rejection of her advances. She follows him across oceans, spies on him from afar, voyeuristically appraises him in sexual congress with lovers and prostitutes, assumes his last name, fakes a pregnancy, and so on. What drove her to madness? Truffaut’s film is uncertain, and her youth and unbridled passions make her sensuous and foolish, blank-eyed and single-minded, despondent and vulnerable. Wrapped around that arresting central performance is sumptuous photography and ravishing dress and severe beauty and dark atmosphere. Where it falters most is the feeling, which is too remote for such a consuming fixation; it’s like reading the pages of her journal (upon which the screenplay is based) and transcribing detail while ignoring the poetry, if such poetry exists in tragic delusion. Filmed in English simultaneously, a version that was released as The Story of Adèle H. Truffaut cameos briefly.

70/100