Halifax, 1863. A young woman, Miss Lewly, comes to Halifax to search for Lt Pinson, with whom she is madly in love. Actually, she is Adèle Hugo, the second daughter of the great French literary figure and statesman. The Lt Pinson does not answer to her love and makes her understand it is hopeless. But as her obsession grows she keeps chasing and harassing him. This film about passionate yet obsessive love and self-destruction is based upon the real diary of Adèle Hugo.Read More »
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A darkly comic tale of desperation, writer/director Bruce Robinson’s post-mortem on the sixties plays out like one long hangover- its characters at the arse-end of a dying era, faced with the stark reality of their paltry existences and the inevitable onslaught of maturity, sobriety and worst of all, the seventies. The film moves with as little motivation as its protagonists, ambiently charting the exploits of its two out-of-work upper-middle class Londoners, their incessant boozing, their efforts to ward off unwelcome visitations from spaced-out dealer Danny (Ralph Brown), their ill-planned and largely accidental trip to the country, and their close encounters with Withnail’s outrageously queer relative Uncle Monty (Richard Griffiths). Grant’s central tragicomic performance is mesmerisingly unhinged, his beady eyes riveting around in his skull with absolute indignation, professing his own worth with completely unchecked arrogance.Read More »
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In 1863 Adèle Hugo, the younger daughter of the great French poet and patriot, Victor Hugo, ran away from home on the Isle of Guernsey where her father was living in exile to follow a young English officer, a Lieutenant Pinson, to his new post in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Lieutenant Pinson was probably not a bad sort, not worse than most, but he wasn’t very serious.
It’s thought that the young, inexperienced Adèle had most likely been Lieutenant Pinson’s mistress for a short time on Gurnsey, and it’s known that she wanted desperately to marry him, though her father disapproved. In any case, Lieutenant Pinson was not interested — a circumstance that Adèle was ill-equipped to understand or ever to support.Read More »