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‘Adam’ a sweet, character-driven gem
Neil Pond
American Profile
September 8, 2009
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Adam / Starring Hugh Dancy & Rose Byrne / Rated PG-13
With all the noise, flash, slash and special-effect stomp of this summer’s “big” movies, “Adam” is a small oasis of character-driven calm.
Hugh Dancy, a British actor who starred previously in “Confessions of a Shopaholic,” plays Adam, a New York electrical engineer with Asperger syndrome, a form of autism. Although he’s able to hold down a job, Adam finds social interaction with others difficult. He doesn’t understand subtleties of conversation and he often says exactly what he’s thinking. He doesn’t understand why everyone else isn’t as obsessed with astronomy as he is.
Not surprisingly, Adam doesn’t have many friends.
As the movie opens, Adam’s father has died, leaving him totally, achingly alone in the small Manhattan apartment they used to share. When an attractive new schoolteacher neighbor, Beth (Rose Byrne, from TV’s “Damages’), moves into the building, Adam is smitten. But he doesn’t know how to respond appropriately to what he’s feeling.
As Beth warms to Adam and eventually learns why he’s so “strange,” she finds herself drawn to him and his idiosyncrasies. She, we learn, has some things of her own to work through, including daddy issues with her accountant father (Peter Gallagher, in a solid supporting performance), who tries to convince her she’s too good for the childlike Adam.
Dancy carries the movie, making us feel his frustration and his struggle to cope with his affliction--without ever reminding us of the actor behind the role. Bryne makes Beth equally believable as a wary, emotionally wounded young woman cautiously guarding her heart as her feelings deepen--and her world is rocked by a turn of events involving her father.
“Adam” is a sweet, melancholy love story that avoids sugarcoating its characters or its subject matter. Dancy’s sensitive, never-showy portrayal of the autistic Adam reminds us that there’s a real person behind every behavioral disorder, psychological condition and personality quirk that often comes off as “strange.”
And Adam’s interest in astronomy isn’t just a random detail. As he explains to Beth, the stars in the cosmos are separated by unfathomable distances, and moving across spatial expanses that boggle the mind. As Adam and Beth work to connect across the seemingly great void that initially separates the two of them, the process prepares them for their own journeys of professional growth and emotional maturity.
With an ending that will come as a surprise, “Adam” is a little gem of a movie that will leave you feeling good about life--and understanding that the heart, when it tries, can cross great divides. |
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