ABOUT ADAM
"About Adam" is a sexual farce about an amoral guy who is all things to all women. The movie has the kind of circuitous plot whose enjoyment could be dampened by the kind of trailer and advance publicity that reveals too much. The pangs of overexposure, I fear have already taken their toll on the movie’s playfulness and sense of mystery. However, I was fortunate enough to see it without any fan fare so I had no idea what I was in for. I was constantly surprised by the use of some tried and true narrative devices borrowed freely from such classics as "Our Town" or "La Ronde." This alone was enough to sustain my interest from one scene to the next for most of the movie. It did begin to run out of steam near the end when the mechanics of the story began to show the machinery at work. Luckily the law of diminishing returns never quite reaches the vanishing point. A large thanks goes to an expert cast that includes members of the Abbey Irish Players with Frances O’Connor ("Mansfield Park"), Charlotte Bradley and a very perky Kate Hudson as the sisters entranced by the seductive Adam.
Stuart Townsend is the mysterious guy who invents a new history for himself for every woman he meets. He literally walks into the life of Lucy (Kate Hudson) while she does her singing waitress routine at the local nightspot. She finds his reticence attractive and decides - almost on the spot - that he’s the guy for her. As their relationship develops with marriage on the horizon, Adam becomes embroiled in the fantasies of Lucy’s sisters and let’s himself be used for their wish fulfillment. Without giving too much away (in case you haven’t seen the promos), that’s essentially it. The most surprising aspect of "About Adam" is its depiction of a sexually active Irish middle class devoid of Catholic guilt.
Some might compare "About Adam" to "Rashomon" with its different viewpoints of the the same incident but that would be a disservice to its writer/director Gerard Stembridge. Memory doesn’t come into play the way it does in Kurosawa’s classic. "About Adam" is made up of a series of flashbacks of the same scenes shot at different angles to reveal information that was missing from the earlier moments.. The framework has more in common with the play, "The Norman Conquests" by Alan Ayckbourn which was made up of several plays about the same events using the same characters and told from different perspectives without changing any of the facts. On one night the play takes place in a house and the next in a garden. Both occupy the same chronology. Stembridge accomplishes much the same thing in "About Adam" sometimes repeating the same scene three of four times, but concentrating on the events that either lead up to or away from the scene. It’s a juggling act from beginning to end that rarely falters.
Copyright 2001
Several classic films with some hint at the narrative devices used in "About Adam"
"Our Town" (1940) - Great adaptation of Thornton Wilder’s Pulitzer prize winning play that dramatizes the daily conflicts of family life, some hidden and some revealed to family members and friends within the same time frame. With William Holden, Martha Scott, Beaulah Bondi and Stu Erwin.
"La Ronde" (1950) - (Fr. with Eng. subtitles) - Max Ophuls directed this tale of a sexual rondelay that follows one character to the next until we are back with the first. With Anton Wolbrook, Simone Signoret, and Jean- Louis Barrault among top notch French stars.
"Alfie" (1966) - Michael Caine is the title character, out to selfishly conquer the whole of womanhood for his own ego, unlike Adam of "About Adam" who takes a woman’s enjoyment seriously.
"Something for Everyone" (1970) - Harold Prince directed this dark sexual farce with Michael York as a sexual predator out to score with every member of a wealthy family for fun and profit. It has more to do with power than sex. This is another movie when it’s good not to know too much before you sit down to watch it. With a superb Angela Lansbury as the matriarch of the household.