The
first thing the movie “Adore” makes you want to do is book a flight to
Seals Rock, New South Wales, Australia, to see the blue drenched waters,
green mountains and hills, sun baked beaches and homes to die for, a
Paradise on earth and the film does a good job of advertising the place
and the surroundings.

Lil
(Naomi Watts) and Roz (Robin Wright) have been best friends from
childhood and still are after each has been married, with Lil now a
 widow and Roz’s husband, Harold (Ben Mendelsohn) taking a job in Sidney
expecting the family to join him. Lil has a son Ian (Xavier Samuel) and
Roz a son, Tom (James Frecheville) both at the end of their teens ready
to take their place in the world. In the sensual surroundings they live
in, it is not long before each mother is having an affair with the
other’s son.

Based
on a short story by Doris Lessing, and a screenplay written by
Christopher Hampton, the latter doesn’t know quite how to get into the
story and the director, Anne Fontaine, seems afraid to tell a 2013
story, instead making it a film that Todd Haynes would have told in the
1990s or Douglas Sirk in the 1950s, both who would have gone deeper into
the ramifications. While there is no darkness in the film neither is
there a light touch that could have made it more meaningful. We have
come a long way from “The Graduate” and Mrs. Robinson but “Adore” is
stuck in that era.

The
supporting players, such as Mendelson, a potential suitor her own age
for Lil, Gary Sweet, and girlfriends for both boys played by Jessica
Tovey, and Sophie Lowe, work hard but the writer and director don’t seem
to take the circumstances seriously and the shock value is almost nil.
It is stuck between the possibility of farce and how lives would be
affected by the adults decisions.

Watts,
Wright, Samuel and Frecheville offer a lot of eye candy for both sexes
and do the best they can with the material they are given.

The
film moves too slowly at points and should have been cut by 10-15
minutes but the work of the cinematographer Christophe Beaucarne is
worth the price of admission. The city of Seal Rocks should give him
surfing rights for his lifetime.