To say that Anne Fontaine’s (Coco Before Chanel) latest, buzzy film Adore – the lovingly photographed New South Wales-set story of two childhood friends who as grown women embark on, well...let me not say forbidden (that’s just too judgy!) but, let’s see, how about...mmm...beyond-unorthodox relationships with each other’s young-adult sons – tackles a complicated subject matter would be to sell it short.
Real short.
Adore is so much than that.
Based on the Nobel laureate Doris Lessing’s Two Grandmothers short novels, the film, f.k.a. Two Mothers, is a meditation on the kind of bond, friendship, and rapport that can exist between two same-sex individuals that is so unshakeable an outsider looking in can’t help but think, Well... those two are in love, they simply have got to be – and they’re and trying to fool the world.
It’s also awards bait for stars Naomi Watts and Robin Wright and, obviously, a conversation piece.
Intriguing so, for Adore isn’t rich in dialogue, and it isn’t filled with stolen glances. It stands as a challenge to the audience for us to analyze and discuss, I think. Which makes it that much more interesting to me.
Watts’ Lil and Wright’s Roz (handling her Aussie accent well, from what I could tell) have known each other forever. They have been there for each other through it all from the time they they were young girls swimming to the barge that forever serves as their sanctuary within their paradise in the middle of the Australian blue to the time they begin the aforementioned relationships, Lil with Tom (James Frecheville) and Roz with Ian (Xavier Samuel from The Twilight Saga).
They have shared it all, from joy to sorrow (Lil has been a widow since the time Ian was a pre-teen). But these women, as much as they truly live for each other, they don’t want each other like that. They admire each other, and I guess by extension, each other’s sons (who, for better or icky; Roz even compares them to gods while they watch them surf early in the film). You do not have to be a genius to see that Ian and Tom are extensions of Lil and Roz and, thus, fathomable. Yes, like that.
When Roz’s husband announces that he is taking a job teaching in Sydney, the situation precipitates Ian to declare he is in love with Roz.
Or is he really in love with his own mum? The s--- gets Oedipal and a half!
In turn, a bit out of spite at first, quite possibly out of his own suppressed feelings, Tom goes to Lil.
Soon, all four are in on it. No, not like that (ew). It’s all very mature. Rather little is said for our benefit, but it is understood everybody involved knows what is up and what it all means, big picture-wise...what the limitations of these relationships – and they are relationships – are and must be.
This is their (new) normal. Love is what makes their world go provocatively round. Outsiders, including us, may come and go, but nothing can or will come between the extraordinary adoration they all puzzlingly feel for one another.
Watts, Wright & Co. are steadfastly stoic in their quest to create and give this feeling of insularity to the film. It works to a point, and that the point is the moment you, the viewer, start to really think about what it all means for them.
My Rating **1/2
Photo: SateliteCine.mx.
No comments:
Post a Comment