The Adored

Some bad movie give me lots of content. Moment after moment to mention and dissect. The Adored isn’t this kind of movie. It’s the kind of bad where I’m completely uninspired to write about it. Even while looking directly at it, The Adored failed to grab my full attention or leave a strong impression.

The film follows the devolving of the relationship between photographer, Francesca and model, Maia. After stepping away from modelling for mysterious personal reasons, Francesca hires Maia for a shoot. Francesca and Maia click and Francesca quickly gains Maia’s trust. This trust is initially used to get better, vulnerable photos of Maia. Maia decides to extend their time together and stay with Francesca for longer. She opens up, expressing personal tragedies and insecurities. But Francesca’s interest in Maia takes a turn for the unhealthy. She gets both possessive and abusive towards Maia and uses Maia’s vulnerable moments as a method to hurt and control her. Also, there’s a subplot with a man in therapy who has an obsessive relationship with an unknown woman. His plot line only crosses into the main Francesca and Maia plot line in the last two minutes of the film.

The Adored feels disparate throughout. There’s a lack of connection between scenes, acts and plot lines. Most notably, the obsessive therapy man subplot feels out of place and never meshes with the main story. But the main story is also all over the map. There’s little groundwork laid in the first act for Francesca’s obsession. She seems like a fine and normal woman with no red flags. Then, we get one shot of her sniffing Maia’s dress and, boom! Suddenly Francesca is unhinged and abusive towards Maia. Near the end, Maia tells Francesca that, “you can’t force me to love you.” I didn’t even know that’s what Francesca’s motivation was. Her actions sure didn’t show that. Even in cases of mentally ill characters, there should be some sort of internal logic to their actions. But this is more a case where Francesca is “crazy” in a broad and generic way.

I’m not sure what genre The Adored was going for. Its story of an obsessive relationship is one that would usually make this a thriller. But The Adored sure isn’t thrilling. There’s more time with the relationship buildup where Francesca is normal than her doing obsessive, thriller-type activities. IMDb has mystery listed as a genre for the film. But the only mystery is maybe Maia’s tragic backstory. Yet revealing those details isn’t really the focus of the film nor is Maia being overly private or untruthful with those revelations. She’s just not sharing them immediately with Francesca or the audience because that’s not how social situations usually work. So, I guess The Adored is a drama. But only because that’s one of the broadest genres in fiction. It’s not a good drama, though. That would require decent character work or exploration. Something The Adored doesn’t have.

The Adored also heavily utilizes The Gaze. This isn’t inherently bad. Francesca is a photographer. It makes sense that there’s a focus on the woman she’s photographing. It might not be bad, but it is boring. Francesca’s photography certainly doesn’t have a strong point of view. Her photos are just a beautiful woman smiling. A good chunk of The film’s first hour is just images of a pretty woman. These images don’t move the plot along and they aren’t that visually interesting. But hey, look! It’s a pretty woman! High quality art and entertainment right here, folks. The rest of the movie belies that the gaze in question is clearly the male gaze. Because Francesca and Maia have little depth of character. Much of their conversation reads clearly as men writing women. There’s simply a lack of insight into the female experiences that the characters discuss.

The Adored was pretty boring. It doesn’t hold together well and as a story of obsession, it’s weak. This movie’s entire existence feels like an excuse to look at pretty women. That’s why Francesca is a photographer and that’s why there’s lesbianism. It all leads back to the creator’s visual interest in women. And while I’m sympathetic to looking at pretty girls, that’s not enough justification for a film. Or, if it is, just make your images of pretty women more visually distinct and artistic.

Overall rating: 2.4/10

Other WLW films in similar genres