The Age of Adaline (2015)

There's something to be said for taking a single sci-fi/fantasy concept and running with it. Unlike world building, it doesn't require a lot of fine details; the audience can concentrate where it matters. The premise doesn't even have to be totally fresh if you know what you're doing.

In 1937, a highly improbable accident yields even more improbable results: Adaline (Blake Lively) stops physically aging at 29. A narrator gives pseudo-scientific justification and alludes to a future theory, but it's not important, especially since Adaline herself never learns it. Like some other ageless characters I've known, she makes a point not to stay in one place with the same identity for long, lest she garner unwelcome attention from unethical researchers. This means limited contact with her daughter (Ellen Burstyn), who looks much older than her by the present, when the bulk of the movie takes place. Despite Adaline's understandable aloofness as "Jenny," young man Ellis (Michiel Huisman) persistently courts her. She starts to warm up to him but is not prepared for another unlikely accident: His dad (Harrison Ford) was her boyfriend four decades ago....

In case you're shaking your head over Adaline's desirability, let me assure you that she has more than youthful beauty going for her. All those decades with a youthful brain have given her plenty of time to hone skills such as languages and general trivia. She even does a good Sherlock Holmes scan. Seems like she could be almost whatever a man wanted her to be. (I get the impression she has mixed feelings about her gift/curse. So would I.)

Those other ageless characters I mentioned? I'm thinking mainly of the protagonists of Highlander and The Man from Earth, respectively a cross-history action epic and a play-like group dialogue about the implications of nigh immortality. Neither was quite what I hoped. But TAoA brings something they could use more of: feminine appeal, and not just with a heroine. For once the romantic-dramatic aspect is front and center.

From my past reviews, you might expect me to shrug off another romantic drama. But SF makes all the difference for my intrigue in the subgenre. I loved Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, for example. Just because a love story could never happen in RL doesn't mean it can't delve into realistically minded hangups in the game of love.

And I think TAoA works on its own terms. It may border on a simple if modern fairy tale at times, and I doubt whether the occasional narration adds more than dullness, but the filmmakers play their cards right for getting me to care about what I should. This is how to handle philosophical exploration on screen: with emotion, not drowning it out in violence or gabbing about it constantly.