ThedevilChoose When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

filippaberry84 I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Allison Davies The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Matho The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

The_Film_Cricket Adjani plays Adele Hugo, the second daughter of author Victor Hugo. Devastated by the loss of her sister, the movie finds her living with her father in exile on the isle of Guernsey where she falls in love with one Lieutenant Pinson, a British Naval Officer who seduced her and whom her father has selected as a husband. She goes to Halifax to rekindle a romance with him only to find that Pinson wants nothing to do with her (marriage would mean he can't whore around) and makes it clear that there will never be any chance of a life together. We've sensed from the very beginning that Adele is a little mad and that knowledge gives weight to what she does for the rest of the film.She is undeterred by his brush-off and begins writing bogus letters back home the she and Pinson are in the throws of a love affair and later she writes of their marriage. Meanwhile she keeps pursuing him, peeping at him while he is having sex, she arranges prostitutes, slips letters into his pockets and sends him money. He is unmoved but she is remains determined even at one point stuffing a pillow under her dress and telling Pinson's father that she is pregnant with his child.She becomes further and further detached from her own sanity until her pride, her dignity and her consciousness of the surrounding world are virtually gone. Terribly ill she sleeps in flophouses but never gives up on Pinson even though it is clear that he is a rat and isn't worth her time. Adjani is the right actress for this material because her breathtaking beauty leaves us thinking that this is a woman who could level any man with her eyes and yet her madness leaves her to pursue a man who wouldn't know a good woman if she fell on him. To look at Adele is to understand the commonality of all of Truffaut's characters who are not led by plot but are urged on by their personalities, their obsessions and their emotions. He loves long close-ups of her beautiful face and there is a sense of her tunnel vision.What we see in that beautiful face is that there is a battle going on inside. There are two sides of Adele, one in reality and one in her writing that are battling for control over her mind. In her writings, the world is a happy, joyous place and as she descends ever further into her madness it consumes her soul. This makes her sound like just a stubborn girl who clings to an uninterested lover, but the screenplay is much smarter than that. Adele is unstable from the beginning (though it is not very apparent) and Pinson rejection fuels her madness and consumes her for the rest of her life.Truffaut isn't interested in pushing Adele into a simple-minded role as a sympathetic waif, his characters were always more complex than that. Adele isn't molded to our affections but we pay witness to an irrational woman trapped between an unloving father and an unloving man whom her madness won't leave behind. The collaboration of Truffaut and Adjani was brilliant, they present the portrait of soul trapped by obsession but refuse to give her any ray of sunshine. The closest thing is in the end in which she wanders the streets wearing rags in a catatonic state and she doesn't recognize Pinson when she passes him on the street. Maybe, for her, this is best.

william-t-archer Truffaut is usually such a high-spirited filmmaker that The Story of Adele H. comes as a great surprise. Isabelle Adjani plays a woman obsessed with a man who has no interest in her. Ultimately she convinces herself that she is in the middle of a great romance and loses touch with reality. By the end of the film she doesn't even recognize her great love anymore, since he exists far more in her mind than he ever has in her experiences. The daughter of Victor Hugo, Adele H. is desperate to create a life apart from her family, and she fixates on her imaginary love affair as her salvation. It's an odd, dark story, and Truffaut takes a determinedly direct approach to it, sacrificing some of the liveliness and cinematic flashiness of his other films but more than making up for it with a sharper focus and intensity. Adjani is brilliant. She makes no effort to win our sympathy or milk us for the pathos inherent in her situation, and the clean, even stark single-mindedness of her acting begins to take on a harsh grandeur as the film goes along. Though far from the most characteristic Truffaut film, this is one of his best.

rafaellima91 Don't read ANY comments if you haven't seen it yet. OH God, François Truffaut summarized so perfectly the stages of ... well, "non corresponded love". It's obsessive, but above all is the love of a lost, fragile woman.Rejection told step by step in its consequences, brilliantly.And then there's Isabelle Adjani. WOW. WHAT A PERFORMANCE! She REALLY incorporates a psychologically instable Adele and deserved the recognition she got (NYFCCA, NBR, NSFCA and was robbed of a much deserving Oscar, but who can beat the "hurricane" One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest?)See IT and feel IT. Remember that it is based on a true story: you won't forget Adele H., her complexity and her nobility soon.

Benedict_Cumberbatch Compared to "Jules & Jim", "Day for Night" or "The 400 Blows", "The Story of Adèle H." seems a minor Truffaut, but it's still a memorable film. Isabelle Adjani's sublime performance - and, we cannot deny, her mesmerizing beauty - as Victor Hugo's daughter, Adèle, blindly in love with a Lieutenant (played by Bruce Robinson, who wrote "The Killing Fields" and directed "Jennifer 8"), are the greatest force behind this film: Isabelle's face is one of the most expressive in film history, and she makes us feel all the sorrow of the tragic Adèle with a single look. Adjani should've won the Oscar she was nominated for (Louise Fletcher won it for her great, but borderline supporting performance in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"), but we know the Academy doesn't tend to give the statuette to actresses in foreign films (they haven't done that since 1961... hopefully that'll change next year if Marion Cotillard deservedly wins for her groundbreaking turn as Edith Piaf in "La Vie en Rose"). Academy's blunder apart, this is a sad and touching story of unrequited love that makes us wonder: why do we always fall for those who don't want us? If you ever fell for someone who didn't care for you (if you're one of 99% of the population, that is), you'll relate to Adèle's story at some point, even if your case wasn't as extreme as hers (and, for your own sake, I hope it isn't!). 8/10.