THE STORY OF ADELE H.

There are several Adele Hugos in Françoise Truffaut’s The Story of Adele H. and a complete picture of the second daughter of Victor Hugo remains unseen by everyone, even Adele herself. We only get a rounded view of her by pasting together the bits of truth amidst her lies.

            We begin knowing this much, in 1863 she secretly left Guernsey, where her father was living in exile (his work, especially Les Misérables, which he wrote while in exile, was always sympathetic to revolutionaries), and sailed to Nova Scotia in search of a British officer who had romanced her back home. To protect herself from the controversy surrounding her family name, she presents herself as Miss Lewly upon arrival. Her mission is personal. She is to find the man she never stopped loving and once claimed to love her.

            Even as Miss Lewly she gives an array of backstories and personas. Early upon her arrival she tells an investigator she is looking for a man that was to marry her sister back home but the wedding could not be as his regiment was moved to Halifax.

            To the Saunders (Sylvia Mariott and Ruben Dorey), the kindly old landlords that take her in and offer her friendship, Adele explains that Lieutenant Pinson (Bruce Robinson) is indeed her lover and their love is mutual. Even her family is denied the truth. She writes to them announcing her engagement and a request for money. Perhaps not surprisingly, this lie is told almost immediately after Pinson tells her that a love between them could never be and practically admits to being a womanizer.

            The Story of Adele H. is Truffaut’s most emotive film and one of his best. It’s also his saddest. It is, after all, a story of unrequited love.

            As Truffaut explained, “In writing the script of L’Enfant Sauvage, based on the memoirs of Dr. Jean Itard, we discovered, Jean Gruault and myself, the enormous pleasure of writing historical fiction based on real events, without inventing anything without altering documented facts. It is difficult to construct an unanimistic intrigue involving a dozen characters whose paths entwine, it is almost as difficult to write an animistic film focusing on a single person. I believe that it was this solitary aspect which attracted me most to this project (The Story of Adele H.); having produced love stories involving two and three people, I wanted to attempt to create a passionate experience involving a character where the passion was one-way only.”

            But it’s darker still. It’s the true story of a young woman with an already turbulent life as the daughter of the most famous poet in France before she falls in love with a man who breaks her heart and then loses her identity. What begins as a deliberate disguise of identity for obvious political reasons becomes an involuntary compulsion for Adele Hugo. British troops are guarding the docks of Halifax, keeping an eye on arriving European cargo ships while also monitoring the turns of the Civil War in the States. Adele arrives incognito and sneaks past immigration officers. Her secrecy pays off and she knows how to remain unnoticed, a necessity for the daughter of a famed exile. But after she finds Lt. Pinson, who gives her a cold reception and tells her to return to Guernsey, a curious thing happens.

            First, she turns to the memory of her sister Leopoldine, who drowned before Adele was born, for solace. Her longing for Leopoldine becomes gradually more intense, eventually driving her to the point in which she tries to contact her spirit. It isn’t until a later scene that we discover the cause of Adele’s obsession with her sister. She wants to become her. So much so, in fact, that she brought her old clothing on the voyage and takes to wearing them, even her glasses. The idolatry is not hard to understand in context of Adele’s situation. Leopoldine was loved by her husband in the way Adele wishes Pinson would love her. When Leopoldine’s husband realized he could not save his wife from the watery grave, he chose to go under with her, and that is the sort of devotion Adele needs.

            A moment that could easily be overlooked but is actually very revealing comes during one of Adele’s many visits to the British Bank of North America, where she collects the money orders from her father. On one visit she encounters a little boy hiding beneath a desk to whom she introduces herself as Leopoldine. At this point in the story she has to assume her sister’s identity because Pinson has just told her that a marriage between them will never be. The life she envies Leopoldine for, then, can only become real if she becomes her sister. Before leaving the bank, however, she has a better idea. She writes a letter to her family announcing her engagement to Lt. Pinson. After she does this, she returns to the boy, apologizes for lying to him, and tells him her real name. If she can create her own happiness (even if it is only in her own mind) she can be happy as herself.

            But, as her memories of Leopoldine’s death become more disturbing, her duality becomes blurred and by the time she arrives in Barbados, where Pinson’s regiment has been moved, she has not only lost all of her identities, but also sight of what caused it all, Pinson now being nothing more than an unconnected stranger. She has come full circle.

            Just as there are multiple faces to Adele Hugo so does our perception of her. Undoubtedly, she is the most harmful to herself, her obsessions leading directly to her destruction, but a conniving streak in her often manifests itself. It’s impossible to forget her devious smile when she first spots Pinson with a lover and, for a moment, we ponder just how dangerous she can be. Ultimately, her scheming amounts to the termination of Pinson’s engagement to a young woman when she tells the girl’s father that Pinson is the father of her unborn child.

            But there is never any sense of danger or even malice in Adele. Everything she does stems from pain and desperation. Truffaut came closer than most male directors to truly understanding a woman’s heart and he creates a clearer picture of Adele Hugo than she could have likely done for herself. His Two English Girls from 1971 was a study of lost love no one would think a male director capable of making. With The Story of Adele H. he surpassed even that breakthrough. His wisest decision was the casting of twenty-year old Isabelle Adjani in the lead. Adjani, a talented starlet with only five films to her credit, is a natural for Adele Hugo. The pristine beauty of her face never once allows us to think of Adele as anything other than a victim of her own demons. Even when the grin that would look sinister on anyone else forms on her face, the effect is more haunting than disturbing.

            Adjani’s performance as Adele Hugo is one that many could not do and perhaps none better. She delivers what is probably the most profound look into the mind of a tormented woman hurt by her own delusions that the movies ever gave, outdoing her own performance years later in Camille Claudel, also about a woman driven to madness through unrequited love. Her performance in that film lacks the natural impact of her performance here, but it nonetheless serves as further testament to her unique talent.

            In contrast to our unwavering empathy for Adele, we have every reason to scorn Lt. Pinson. By his own admission he’s a louse and treats the hearts of women as a toy. But we always see him from Adele’s perspective, as the dashing young soldier who once professed his love to her. We know of his unsavory traits as well as Adele does in her own way. But we are stubborn in our forgiveness of Pinson because Adele (who is our frame of reference) is stubborn in her love for him.

            The Story of Adele H. is a somber film; fittingly as it is seen through the eyes of a woman who allowed herself little happiness. Even the one moment of levity, when a hypnotist Adele hopes to hire to entrance Pinson into marrying her is accidentally revealed to be a fraud by his dopey assistant, comes at her loss and shatters one more hope.

            Nestor Almendros’s cinematography in The Story of Adele H. is his moodiest and creates a cold disaffected world. The Halifax scenes which make up most of the film (actually a set created in Guernsey) were shot in glum darkness, evoking no joy or hope. None of the film was really shot in Nova Scotia, but this matters little since Adele’s time there consisted mainly of visits to dimly lit stuffy rooms and offices, a sad world to nurse a broken heart. When the location shifted to Barbados (those scenes filmed in Senegal), the light goes on both literally and figuratively as Adele’s pain is, to a degree, over. But by then, it’s too late. Adele has lost herself and, like the film which is based on her memoirs, much of her life was already spent in darkness.

            And yet, The Story of Adele H. is not a depressing film. Despite its limited and bland sets, it’s a beautifully poetic film. It vibrates with compassion at every moment for all the players, from Adele to Victor Hugo himself and even for Pinson who, despite having triggered Adele’s mental and emotional collapse, does his best to end it all as delicately and diplomatically as possible. Truffaut seems to have created two avatars for himself; Mrs. Saunders, always offering her distraught lodger advice and shelter and Madame Baa (Madame Louise), a former slave in Barbados who takes Adele in and nurses her back to health after finding her walking the streets unaware of her surroundings and the object of mockery for the local children. Madame Baa could neither read nor write, but through a translator her letters to Victor Hugo were the primary source for an otherwise unknown chapter in Adele Hugo’s life before she was sent back to Paris where she died in an asylum in 1915.

            It was a sad ending by any measure, but it comes softly in the film it concludes. The Story of Adele H. recognizes the true impact of emotional pain and looks at one of its most famous victims with loving eyes. It’s a movie with a big heart, even if it’s broken.