The Age of Adaline
Chicken soup for the soul, for those on a strict diet of women's magazines.
Overview
The Age of Adaline delivers what you expect from a nice, girlie rom movie manufactured in Hollywood: pretty costume designs courtesy of Angus Stathie (Moulin Rouge), a really nice piece of man candy - the relatively unknown Michiel Huisman (Game of Thrones), and a 'thinking girl's' plot which is equal parts unsurprising and incredulous.
Let's review.
The plot is whimsical, but delivers well within expectations. Of course man candy (Ellis Jones) notices her because she's sitting outside the library reading Braille (she's not blind though, just one of those "quirky" girls). Of course, he's a math major and philanthropist. Of course she works in a library and speaks various languages (English, French, Portuguese and others not mentioned, but we're guessing she's got like twenty under her belt).
You can easily imagine the pitch delivered by producers Sidney Kimmel and Co., 'It's Time Traveller's Wife meets Amelie meets Moulin Rouge meets some kind of movie Zooey Deschanel recently starred in.' Or something like that. Add in Blake Lively to play the lead character, Adaline, and you know you have a cash creating formula.
Blake Lively (to be fair, you never really forget it's Blake on screen, so I'll just keep using her real name when discussing the character) has been 29 years old for the last eight decades after getting into a weird car accident where she also gets struck by lightning, causing her to stay eternally young. Hysterical realism a la Zadie Smith leaks into the film to explain and try to make the main premise of the film credible. We give full points for trying, but let's be fair, it's not a sci-fi, no one cares if it is or isn't believable.
Moving on. Blake's 'real' age does not inhibit her ability to fall in love or have lovers and all that that entails. Mentally, this isn't a problem when you think it's just Blake get frisky. Problems arise when you vaguely do the math of how old this character is and you feel a little bit weirded out, as if you were watching Demi Moore fifty years into the future getting with Ashton Kutcher's child. Maybe we're just not progressive enough to be okay with it. Shit gets even weirder and more intergenerational later, but we won't explicitly spoil the plot.
What makes Age of Adaline interesting is that in spite of its Hollywood pedigree, the film still yearns to be something else. Something more "arty", which in some ways it successfully attains, but in other ways it just easily falls under what Concrete Playground would like to dub the "brainy rom" code. It's a lightweight film which intermittently tries to increase its vocabulary with fun historical trivia, but then undermines itself with its return to the normal rom conventions. Unfortunately, The Age of Adaline can't bite the hand that feeds it, which means it necessarily buckles under the weight of the successful although formulaic Hollywood expectation; platitudes are delivered empathetically, but still hit hollow.
In terms of hitting its other audience, the bread-and-butter rom lasses who don't watch anything else, it's quite progressive. The film quite nicely addressing society's obsession with eternal youth and beauty, something particularly prevalent in that demographic. Blake has both, but what she really just wants is to "grow old with someone". A nice sentiment and a nice thing to see a blockbuster trying to pedal.
Sure, the plot holes are bigger than their age gap, and the film follows the traditional Hollywood arc as perfectly as Blake's nose does, but hell, at least it's trying to bridge the gap between pop cinema and art house. It's not flawless, but there's enough man candy, good intentions and pretty mise-en-scene to smudge its mistakes.
The Age of Adaline is chicken soup for the soul for those on a strict diet of women's magazines and rom films, a pretty but 'lite' snack for those who like their films to be Meaningful.
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