Benoit Jacquot's film, Adolphe (2002), is the adaptation of Benjamin Constant's 19th Century French classic, a novella reputed not to be adaptable to the screen. Indeed, Jacquot proved it, or maybe his talent as a director was simply not up to the task. You cannot watch this film without recalling the (several) screen adaptations of the French epistolary novel by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, Les Liaisons Dangereuses (1782), which preceded Adolphe by thirty-four years, and in particular the beautiful Stephen Frears version, Dangerous Liaisons (1988).
The action takes place at the turn of the 19th Century. Adolphe (Stanislas Merhar) is a carefree, somewhat jaded 22-year-old, scion of a preeminent aristocratic family, with a very promising political career ahead of him. To Adolphe, love means conquest, and since he is bored, love is a good pastime. At a soireé given by the Count (Jean Yanne) in his sumptuous castle, Adolphe sets his eyes on the beautiful Ellénore (Isabelle Adjani), a young widow, ten years his elder, mother of two children. She also happens to be the Count's mistress. Adolphe falls in love with Ellénore, for lack of a better thing to do. At first, Ellénore resists Adolphe's feverish advances. He insists, becoming an overwhelming presence (and nuisance) in Ellénore's life. Eventually, she surrenders. Soon after, the novelty of this adventure wearing out, Adolphe tries to liberate himself from his new lover, who has become a burden in his life, an obstacle to his freedom. However, he cannot bring himself to altogether sever his relationship with Ellénore, as the idea of making her suffer is to him unbearable.
Ellénore loses everything as she tries desperately to "hang onto" her lover: her children, the Count's protection, her status in society. For his part, Adolphe's life is in limbo, as he is unable to break once and for all with his now dying love affair. He offends his father, who demands his return to a more conventional life, and he abhors his own indecisiveness, his inability to end his love affair and regain his freedom. What follows is the fallout of an obsessive relationship: unbearable guilt, accusations, and poison letters of recriminations between the two parties. Eventually this emotional charade ends up in death and misery.
Benjamin Constant's novel, the story of a young man incapable of love, became the symbol of "le mal du siècle," or world-weariness. It is partly autobiographical as far as the character of Ellénore goes, as she is the embodiment of Madame de Staël, the writer's jealous mistress. But it is difficult to be passionate about Jacquot's rather cold love story. Jacquot's production is stuffy and, let's admit it, boring, which is partly due to the stale platitudes and triteness of the dialogue written by Fabrice Roger-Lacan (although the voice-overs, taken verbatim from the novel and read by Merhar, are very effective for a period piece, giving an appropriate impression of distance in time). The dialogue between the protagonists is banal and unconvincing. We do not get touched by the equivocations or the passionate flames of the two characters.
In the acting department, Stanislas Marher is thoroughly dull. His expressionless face and emotionless portrait of Adolphe is totally unconvincing, and leaves the viewer uninvolved. Adjani is only saved by her elegant personality and gorgeous physique, but her acting is on par with that of her lover: awful.. For some time, Adjani dreamed of playing Madame de Staël, and she was at the genesis of Adolphe. But, by now, one has grown tired of Adjani's portrayals of a grief-stricken woman, which she has been performing since Histoire d'Adèle H., (1975). Jean Yann, as The Count, is aristocratic in his demeanor, and provides the only solid acting in the film.
The point is not to judge the film by its content or its form, but to appreciate the director's ability to immerse and involve himself in the universe of the writer, and by so doing, appropriate him. On this account, Jacquot barely succeeded. In a novel, the written words give a background into which the reader's imagination and/or past experience flourish: the drama rests entirely on the author's writing. But in a film, the director interposes himself between the writer and the viewer, and in this particular film, the director and his lead actors have been unable to bring to life a story driven by feelings rather than by action.
The music is forgettable, excepted for few bars of a delightful theme from Robert Schumann's Quintet for piano and strings, Op. 44, which appears repetitively, almost obsessively, and in a very unimaginative way, throughout the film and eventually works at cross-purposes to setting the mood.
If it can be, the film is "saved" by Benoit Delhomme's remarkable cinematography. Delhomme, who found his inspiration in Ingres for the France scenes, and Wilhelm Hammershoi for the Polish ones, transports the protagonists in a kind of magical universe. We also note the authenticity of the costumes by Catherine Bouchard, and a classic mise en scene, which is of course what one would expect from an époque-piece.
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