Adoration

It looks nice. But it's the same tone from beginning to end, so becomes visually boring very quickly.

The acting is just ok - incredibly earnest with lots of 'emoting' going on to fill the vast distances between plot points or intrigue.

The story is a fairly typical young love drama. Our boy is inexperienced and because of this, he devotes himself to 'rescuing' our girl who is, like, totally crazy man. She's like, totally in an institution and the bad doctors give her sedatives and stuff. And then she y'know, like, says crazy things. She's like sooo crazy.

The writing of her character is unforgiveably weak. The boy slackens his jaw and gawps at her for most of the runtime. The film plods along predictably until it stubs its toe on the ending, which is neither tragic enough nor dramatic enough to matter. In fact, the ending is where the story should have begun. Everything up until that point could have been covered in two minutes.

Tedious, thematically transparent, metaphorically barren and in love with itself. Guff.

The movie begins with a quotation from Boileau -Narcejac ,two writers famous for having written Clouzot's "les diaboliques " and Hitchcock' s "vertigo " .Let's be straight about this : the film has nothing to do with them ,even to the lesser extent , with the possible exception of the would be wicked uncle's setup .

The escape on the river may hint at a teenage "night of the hunter" ,but directing ,which is rather dull does not follow suit .The screenplay is a curate's egg : best thing is the character of the girl :is she that much sincere? Does that uncle who wants to get rid of her and latch onto her heritage really exist (the same goes for the kind grandpa ) ? Does she suffer from paranoia , seeing enemies everywhere from a couple of harmless tourists to a man who might be a pedophile to a simple hen "my uncle's spy" ? Her fits of hysteria may incline the viewer to favor the second hypothesis.

As for the boy, the character is thoroughly plausible in the first sequences : the episode of the wounded bird does not lack poetry or emotion, two qualities which would descends into the banality of the initiation of a virgin lad by an older girl;nevertheless,their relationship ,apart from the expected sex side , is more ambiguous than it appears first : the boy ,every now and then ,is afraid of his mate:perhaps a metaphor for the fear of the first time,most likely some kind of sin with a new Eve who takes her to a paradise (see the last sequences ,superbly filmed ) where a latent menace hangs on them.

I haven't seen other films by this director, but I'll be sure to. I'm thoroughly pleased with this one - poetic, unintrusive, but unsparing. Subtle in its approach and daring as it deals with psychopathy in children. It evokes great performances from its main protagonists; and another actress strikingly reminded me of the one from Spoorloos (The Vanishing).

Given the film is eerie, visual and intuitive, I don't know why iMDB needs me to add many more words. I may throw in some of the heroine's: "They are snakes and pigs. They want to hurt me. So you will not abandon me? I will love you then."

This is what cinema is supposed to be like. Flawless acting, transcending imagery, touching story, shockingly human. All-in-all, so hauntingly beautiful.

Thank you!

Merci!

Bedankt!

Paul and his mother move to her new workplace, a high end psychiatric hospital. He falls for beautiful disturbed patient Gloria who convinces him to help her escape. It starts with a deadly incident and gets ever more dangerous.

For men, the crazy beauty ratio is very real and there is plenty of both in Gloria. I totally get Paul's motivation and dilemma but at some point, he has to man up. The two young leads are good. They are able to maintain intrigue in this relatively simple young tragic romance.