AT age 33, Adaline Bowman, born on the first day of the 20th century, now a widow with a daughter, experiences an unique set of circumstances that suspends the ageing process in her.
For more than seven decades she keeps this secret, fearful that the FBI will find her (and not smart enough to work out that the FBI has long since lost interest in her).
Adaline changes her identity every 10 years. Her only apparent pleasure is lead-footedness until the day a Highway Patrol officer checks her licence. Now, in the second decade of our century, a wealthy and handsome man wants to court her. Having made his pile in IT and retired before 40, Ellis (Michiel Huisman) now does philanthropic cultural stuff. Ellis takes Adaline to meet his oldies on their 40th wedding anniversary. To tell what happens next would unjustifiably spoil a film that’s by no means the worst you might see in the love-story genre, even if a little flaccid as fantasy.
Director Lee Toland Kreiger’s filming of the screenplay by Miles Goodloe and Salvatore Paskowitz is adequately effective. Blake Lively plays the attractive 33-year-old centenarian. Ellen Burstyn is her septuagenarian daughter. Kathy Baker plays Ellis’ mother. And Harrison Ford gives a subdued, albeit satisfying, performance as Ellis’ father.
But throughout the film, you might be forgiven for being just a tad sceptical about how Adaline got to be how she is and her reasons for accepting the solitude, celibacy and emotional discomfort that it inflicts on her.
At Capitol 6, Palace Electric, Hoyts Belconnen and Dendy
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