Reviews

My women friends loved this, while my male friends and I squirmed through what seemed a painfully long drawn out predictable story. In drama of all sorts, when someone is so happy at the start you can just see the bad news coming. Life and the Film Business should have taught us all by now that the writer/actor/director/ roles combined in one human being is usually not a wise move. Sadly, this film proves it. I am sure Melanie Laurent will go on to do more good films (If you direct don't act - If you act please don't direct) but "The Adopted" could do with some much firmer discipline in cutting and moving the story along. I loved some of the acting sequences woman-to-woman in the book shop (that marvellous book shop owner!) and probably my favorite scene is the young boy talking to his dead aunt in his treasured Polaroid picture that scene really is film - underline film!

I saw this in Paris - a city that must be full of Jarmusch fans - but there were only a few in the cinema to share what must compete to be the most beautiful bore of the year. To make a film without a point must have been his aim and in this - boy! - did he succeed. I admit that I woke up to admire the beautiful bum of the woman character listed in the credits as "nude" but all the other stars seemed to be sleepwalking through cameos that could not be called 'roles'. Beautiful cinematography cannot conceal a lack of vision, plot, direction or story line. Come On! This is Cinema! There should be something for the viewer more than the ice cream in the lobby.

Sharing, from a safe cinema seat, the anguish of an occupied people gave us a view of how we might behave in such terrible circumstances. The villains are not the Germans but the French people themselves. The real horror is not in the big scenes of torture but the ordinariness of the concierge cheerfully denouncing people in her own building. The French are still living today with the guilt of all that and this film is one of the rare examples of a frank look at this from the inside. I called it a "worthy" film which carries the film-makers problem of telling a tough story but still needing to seduce an audience into the cinema. The Picture House had a very small audience when I saw it tonight.