Adoration

Overview

Adoration opens with the seaside funeral of Theo, an event which doesn't seem to have particularly bothered anyone. His wife, Lil (Naomi Watts), and her best friend, Roz (Robin Wright), are altogether content with their lot; they live in a Garden of Eden-like seaside town and enjoy a friendship so enduring and close that people in the small community whisper that they are "lezzoes".

When Roz's husband, Harold (Ben Mendelsohn), leaves for a job teaching drama in Sydney, the path is clear for them to give into temptation as each takes the other's gym-toned surf-loving son, Ian (Xavier Samuel) and Tom (James Frecheville), as lovers.

At a preview screening, there were scattered laughs throughout, a worry for a film aiming for thoughtful adult drama rather than comedy. Adoration takes itself very seriously, though there are some potentially interesting ideas bubbling away underneath the slick surface, not least a sense that Lil and Roz are taking up these younger lovers for deeper reasons than a simple desire for their attractive sons — they are grasping at the memory of their own faded youth and seeking to be even closer with each other, the young men acting as substitutes for their own sublimated love.

But too often the film wastes the dramatic potential of its material and settles for clunky symbolism rather than nuance; a scene where the characters sit down to eat an apple for no particular reason apart from the obvious biblical symbolism is particularly galling.

Perhaps a director as versed with melodrama as Pedro Almodóvar could have made a great film out of Adoration, but this version stubbornly refuses to embrace the essential soapy silliness at its core, instead stretching for serious drama. Cue Lil looking off into the middle distance and intoning "We've crossed a line here" as she and Roz ponder their latest transgressions.

A baffling development sees Tom, previously a monosyllabic lunk, declare his ambitions of working in theatre and temporarily move to Sydney, where he meets an aspiring actress, Mary (a scene-stealing Jessica Tovey), who also gets dragged into their web of adultery and deceit. Meanwhile, Lil's hapless suitor Saul (Gary Sweet) trails after her like a despondent puppy, dimly unaware of the fraught emotions of the group he longs to be part of.

Blessed with a paradisiacal backdrop and shot with a stylish malevolence, Adoration is a kind of interesting failure. It isn't as bad as unintended guffaws would suggest, but it's hard to escape the feeling of missed opportunity here.