The Age Of Adaline

Adaline Bowman, the title character in The Age of Adaline, is a bit like Dorian Gray, except she doesn't have a rotting portrait in the attic. Instead she has persisted for more than a century as a svelte blonde with movie star looks and the sophisticated air of a Vogue editor. Naturally, she's miserable - cursed with eternal youth, what else is she to do but suffer nobly?

And suffers she does. She loses her husband, an engineer working on the Golden Gate Bridge, in a work accident; then nearly dies herself in an automobile accident brought on by unexpected snow in the hills north of San Francisco. In a curious confluence of events, she lands in a freezing river and suffers hyperthermia; but a bolt of lightning revives her, causing the most unusual physiological effect: She will never age. This is explained by a honey-voiced narrator whose pompous commentary fills in the gaps of this mash-up of magical realism and Nicholas Spark-like romance.

At first Adaline's condition is curious. Middle-aged friends are surprised how she has endured the ravages of time, mistaking her as a sister to her daughter. But after escaping from government agents trying to abduct her, Adaline goes underground, taking clerical jobs and changing her identity every ten years. She is about to do so when she smitten with Ellis Jones, a handsome millionaire philanthropist she meets on New Year's Eve (Michiel Huisman, wasted in a one-dimensional role). Flemming, her daughter (Ellen Burstyn), now old enough to be her grandmother, tells her to stop running and have a relationship with Ellis. But will her past catch up with her?

When it does the film takes a loopy turn; but that this plot twist was obvious after witnessing Adaline jilt her boyfriend in the late 1960s. (Hint: it involves Ellis' dad, played by Harrison Ford). What proves most unsatisfying about this movie is how timid it is with its fetching premise. It has plenty of style - the David Lanzenberg's cinematography, especially in the meticulous conceived flashbacks, has an elegant sheen and director Lee Toland Kreiger has an eye for the romantic San Francisco settings, both past and present. But the script (by J. Mills Goodloe and Salvador Paskowitz) is a mix of soapy romance and twee fantasy. It raises interesting questions, then reverts to dreary predictability.

Nor do you care much for Adaline, played in a porcelain princess style by Blake Lively. She is, simply, a radiant screen presence in appearance at least; at times she recalls Grace Kelly in her prime, but most mannequins have more emotional range than the most photogenic Lively. She's like a model in a high-fashion magazine spread. Like the character herself, Lively looks both contemporary and timeless in the designs by Angus Strathie; but she keeps her dully conceived character at such a distance it's next-to-impossible to make an emotional connection. She doesn't so much suffer as pout, but pout exquisitely. Has an actress ever been more poorly named? Better is Harrison Ford in a curiously conceived character suddenly thrust back into his past and is most convincing in his confusion, Best of all is Burstyn as Adaline's 80-something daughter, who manages to call Lively 'Mama' without breaking into chuckles. Now that's called acting.