The Age of Adaline
The Age of Adaline is a 2015 American romantic fantasy film directed by Lee Toland Krieger and written by J. Mills Goodloe and Salvador Paskowitz. The film stars Blake Lively as Adaline, with Michiel Huisman, Kathy Baker, Amanda Crew, Harrison Ford, and Ellen Burstyn. Narrated by Hugh Ross, the story follows Adaline Bowman, a young woman who stops aging following an accident at the age of twenty-nine.
The film was produced by Sidney Kimmel Entertainment and Lakeshore Entertainment. Principal photography took place in Vancouver from March 5 to May 5, 2014.
It premiered in New York City on April 19, 2015, and was cinematically released on April 24 in the United States by Lionsgate. It received mixed reviews from critics, though many praised both Lively's and Ford's performances, citing them as some of their best work in recent years. A modest box-office success, it grossed $65.7 million worldwide on a $25 million budget. The film received two nominations at the 42nd Saturn Awards, one for Best Fantasy Film and one for Lively for Best Actress.
Plot[edit]
Adaline Marie Bowman was born on New Year's Day, 1908, in San Francisco at 12:01 am to Faye and Milton Bowman. In 1929, when she was twenty-one, Adaline married engineer Clarence James Prescott. Three years later, in 1932, they had a daughter named Flemming. Five years later, in 1937, Clarence as well as nine others were killed during the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge. Ten months after his death, Adaline crashed her car into a ravine while driving to her parents beach cottage and died in a freezing lake in Sonoma County, but a lightning strike that struck her car revived her. From then on, Adaline stopped aging.
Sixteen years pass, and in 1953, after a traffic violation, a police officer confiscates her ID and thinks it must be fake, as she is now forty-five but still appears twenty-nine. That night, two FBI agents attempt to abduct her for study. She realizes she must spend the rest of her life on the run, changing her identity every decade. She bids a tearful goodbye to now-adult Flemming, who continues to get older than her mother.
Six decades later, in 2015, under the alias "Jennifer Larson," Adaline falls in love with philanthropist Ellis Jones. She knows she cannot afford to have a proper relationship but can't resist him. Finally, she goes to his parents' 40th anniversary party. His father, William, recognizes her instantly, but she claims Adaline was her mother, who died six years earlier. Adaline recalls that she had been in love with William once, and he had wanted to marry her.
William is shaken when he notices a scar on Adaline's hand, from a cut she sustained while she and he were hiking decades before. He confronts her, and she admits the truth. He begs her to stay for Ellis's sake, but Adaline instead writes Ellis a note and leaves. Finding the letter, Ellis confronts his father, who refuses to explain.
Driving home, Adaline calls Flemming (now old enough to be her grandmother), to say she is tired of running. A flatbed truck plows into her car, pushing it into a ravine. Thrown from the car, Adaline's heart stops due to hypothermia. An ambulance crew revives her with a defibrillator and she wakes up in the hospital with Ellis at her bedside. They profess their love, and Adaline tells him her one hundred and seven years of life and fear of being discovered.
A year later, Ellis and Adaline are leaving for a New Year's Eve party when, in the hallway mirror, she notices a grey hair. When Ellis asks if she is okay, she replies she’s “perfect.” A voiceover explains that the jolt from the defibrillator restarted her aging process. Adaline smiles, realizing that she is now able to grow old with Ellis.
Reception[edit]
Box office[edit]
The Age of Adaline earned $42,629,776 in North America and $23,033,500 in other countries, for a worldwide box office gross of $65.7 million.[25] The film opened with $575,000 during Thursday late-night showings at 2,100 U.S. theaters.[26] It finished the weekend at number three behind Furious 7 and Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 with $13.4 million from 2,991 locations.[27]
Critical response[edit]
The Age of Adaline received mixed reviews from critics, although the performances of Blake Lively and Harrison Ford received very positive reviews and were cited as some of their best work in recent years.[28] On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 55% of 173 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 5.5/10. The website's consensus reads: "The Age of Adaline ruminates on mortality less compellingly than similarly themed films, but is set apart by memorable performances from Blake Lively and Harrison Ford."[29] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 51 out of 100, based on 31 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews.[30] In CinemaScore polls conducted during the opening weekend, cinema audiences gave The Age of Adaline an average grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale.[31]
Matt Zoller Seitz of RogerEbert.com gave the film three out of four stars, expressing surprise at the film's increase in quality midway through: "I've never seen a less involving movie become so compelling at the exact moment when you've resigned to write it off as just okay." He also gave high praise to Harrison Ford's dramatic performance, writing that "Ford's voice—always deep, lowered an octave by age and one more by William's longing—is even more powerful [than the devastating look on his face]. This is Ford's best performance since The Fugitive, maybe since Witness".[32]