Director: Anne Fontaine
Stars: Naomi Watts, Robin Wright, Xavier Samuel, James Frecheville, Ben Mendelsohn, Sophie Lowe, Gary Sweet, Jessica Tovey
Lil (Watts) and Roz (Wright) are lifelong best friends who live next door to each other. They both have boys around the same age, Ian (Samuel) is Lil’s boy and Tom (Frecheville) is Roz’s. The four of them spend a lot of time together as Lil’s husband died, and when Roz’s marriage begins to fall apart she and Ian realize a mutual attraction for each other. In response to this Tom and Lil begin an affair, but complications arise when Tom begins to desire a younger woman.
So yes, the premise is instantly going to turn some people off. I mean, at the beginning of the film we see a time when the boys are still boys and the woman are surrogate mothers for each other’s sons but quickly we’re thrust into the future where the boys have turned into ‘Greek gods’ (an observation of how they look by the mothers). It’s a very uncomfortable, incestuous feeling as even though they aren’t biologically related the boys have basically been raised by Lil and Roz. That’s instantly going to make Adore a film to avoid.
But is it worth breaking through the barrier of discomfort? Some films deal with difficult material in a mature way and reveals some deep truths about the nature of humanity. This is not one of those films. Unfortunately it’s just incredibly shallow and the characters are horrible. I don’t think every film has to have good characters but there should be at least someone you’re rooting for, but here they’re all selfish and there’s no emotional weight to their problems because there’s never a reason to care about what happens to them.
At one point Lil remarks to Roz, ‘You’re the only one who hasn’t acted badly here,’ which completely forgets the fact that Roz was the one who cheated on her husband initially, and it just shows the complete lack of self-awareness that these characters display. On top of this, the relationships aren’t developed well or given much context. They just happen and then we’re told that these people are in love. There’s no discussion about how weird it is and how they deal with the initial awkwardness, and since the film focuses on the four of them there’s no way for there to be a mature discussion about the nature of the relationships and whether they are in fact damaging or not, because they seem so isolated from the rest of the world. At one point Lil remarks that they are going to try and be ‘respectable pillars of the community,’ but they’re never shown to be a part of a community!
Despite this the actors do threaten to escape the shallow shackles of the character. Xavier Samuel in particular gives a good performance and actually gives you a sense that these events do matter, at least to someone. The film is also shot beautifully as well, sometimes with a dreamy quality that’s quite soothing.
But I can’t recommend it. It doesn’t offer any valuable commentary on this type of relationship as the characters are unsympathetic and the relationships aren’t given any depth or substance. There’s no reason to ever care about what happens to the characters and it ends up being a shallow film.