The Age of Adaline (2015)
Laura’s Rating: 4.5/5 Stars
I’m a fan of Blake Lively from her Gossip Girl days and I also enjoyed her performance in A Simple Favor (2018) so I thought I’d give another one of her movies a try.
The Analysis:
29-year-old Adaline Bowman is living a simple existence in 2014, despite the fact that she was also 29 years old in 1937. After an unusual car accident, Adaline doesn’t age a single day and even after extensively researching her condition, she can find no explanation. After several years, her lack of aging becomes suspicious and she decides to move and change her identity every decade, determined to keep her secret from the world.
Parts of the film are told in an almost documentary style, with a narrator and brief flashbacks. Some of the narration covers the accident and the years immediately following, showing how Adaline must live a semi-transient lifestyle in order to avoid questions. Because of this, she can’t get close to anyone for long and her relationships are distant. It’s painful to watch Adaline strain to stay alone in the world and you can feel her pain at all that she has lost and missed out on over the years.
I really liked the casting for the film. The character of Adaline has an old-fashioned style that reads vintage in the modern day setting and pairs perfectly with Blake Lively’s timeless beauty. The supporting cast fits well in their roles and delivers believable performances, with Ellen Burstyn and Harrison Ford really knocking it out of the park.
This movie is quite emotional in parts and terribly romantic in others. My only complaint is that there could have been a bit more depth to the characters to fill them out a bit. Even without that, The Age of Adaline has some nice lessons too: that it’s never too late to start over and that life is nothing without people to love. This is a really beautiful movie and I’d definitely recommend it.
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