The Age of Adaline has one idea, and it states it in the title. Blake Lively plays a woman who stops aging at 29 after a car crash and a lightning strike in Sonoma County. The film runs 112 minutes. It is a romance, a fantasy and a drama, and it never settles on which of the three it wants to be.
Trailer, via Lionsgate Movies.
A Lightning Strike in Sonoma County
The mechanic is fixed early. Adaline Marie Bowman is born on New Year’s Day, 1908, in San Francisco. She marries engineer Clarence James Prescott in 1929. Their daughter Flemming arrives in 1932. Clarence and nine others are killed during construction of the Golden Gate Bridge in 1937. Ten months later Adaline drives into a ravine on the way to her parents’ beach cottage and dies in a freezing lake in Sonoma County. A lightning strike on her car brings her back. She does not age again.
That is the whole engine. Everything after it is logistics.
Lee Toland Krieger directs from a script by J. Mills Goodloe and Salvador Paskowitz. Hugh Ross narrates, and the narration carries weight the scenes might have carried themselves. Sidney Kimmel Entertainment and Lakeshore Entertainment produced. Principal photography ran in Vancouver from March 5 to May 5, 2014.
A Police Officer and Two FBI Agents
The film’s best stretch is its most paranoid. In 1953 a traffic violation gets Adaline’s ID confiscated. She is 45 and looks 29, so the officer assumes the card is fake. She takes a clerical job at a medical school and finds nothing about her condition. Two FBI agents try to abduct her for study. She goes on the run, changing her identity every decade, and says goodbye to a grown Flemming who will soon look older than her mother.
That is a real movie. It is a movie about a woman hunted for what she is, and about a mother who has to watch her daughter outgrow her. The Age of Adaline keeps that movie at arm’s length. The pursuit and the farewell both feel rushed past, given how much the film has riding on them. What it lingers on is the romance.
Jennifer Larson Meets Ellis Jones
By 2015 Adaline is living as “Jennifer Larson.” She meets Ellis Jones, a philanthropist played by Michiel Huisman, and goes with him to his parents’ 40th wedding anniversary. His father William, played by Harrison Ford, recognizes her on sight and calls her Adaline. She says Adaline was her mother, dead six years. Both of them then privately remember a courtship decades earlier, when William wanted to marry her and she left before he could ask.
Ford is the reason the back half works at all. He plays the recognition without fuss, and the scene where he notices a scar on her is the one moment the film trusts its audience. Lively carries the first hour on presence alone, which is roughly what the role asks for.
The cast around them is deep and mostly wasted. Ellen Burstyn plays Flemming. Kathy Baker and Amanda Crew play Kathy and Kikki Jones. Lynda Boyd plays Regan, Adaline’s blind friend. Anthony Ingruber plays young William. Peter J. Gray plays Clarence.
Here is the film’s running order, and where the years land:
| Year | What happens |
|---|---|
| 1908 | Adaline born in San Francisco |
| 1929 | Adaline weds Clarence James Prescott |
| 1932 | Daughter Flemming born |
| 1937 | Clarence killed on the Golden Gate Bridge |
| 1938 | Car crash, lightning strike, aging stops, ten months after Clarence’s death |
| 1953 | ID confiscated, FBI pursuit begins |
| 2015 | Meets Ellis Jones as “Jennifer Larson” |
What the Film Refuses to Ask
A woman who cannot age has to answer questions, and The Age of Adaline declines to ask them.
- She cannot have a normal relationship, and the film says so once.
- She cannot stay in one place, and the film shows that once, in 1953.
- She cannot watch her daughter grow old, and the film touches that thread only briefly.
Three rules, then a love story. The rules never press on the romance. Adaline’s condition is a costume she wears between meet-cutes, not a trap that closes.
The narration makes this worse. Every time the film could let a silence sit, Ross explains the silence. The film is 112 minutes and still feels like it is skipping.
A Modest Return on a Modest Budget
The Age of Adaline premiered in New York City on April 19, 2015, and Lionsgate released it in the United States on April 24. It grossed $65.7 million worldwide against a $25 million budget. That is a modest success, and it is easy to see why. The premise sells the ticket.
The reviews were mixed. Many critics praised Lively and Ford, and the praise was earned. The film got two nominations at the 42nd Saturn Awards, Best Fantasy Film and Best Actress for Lively. Neither is a stretch.
The production history is more interesting than the film. Katherine Heigl was cast as Adaline on May 12, 2010, with Angela Lansbury set to play Flemming that November. Heigl withdrew on November 15. Rumors that Lakeshore fired her were denied by both sides; Heigl said her recent adoption of a daughter was the reason. TheWrap reported in August 2011 that Natalie Portman had been offered the lead. Portman told Entertainment Weekly that month that she had turned it down. Lively and Burstyn were cast in October 2013, Ford in January 2014, Huisman in February.
What the Years Are For
The Age of Adaline is a good premise, a strong Ford performance and a first act that promises a stranger film than the one that arrives. It is not a bad movie. It is a cautious one. It has the pieces for a story about grief and pursuit and instead spends its second half on a romance that never has to fight for anything.
The film walks Adaline through 1929, 1937, 1953 and 2015 and treats those years as set dressing. The one stretch that carries real weight, the FBI pursuit, gets minutes. The anniversary weekend gets the rest.
Worth watching for Ford. Worth watching for the 1953 section. Not worth watching for the answer to the question the title poses, because the film never gives one.
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