This film was originally titled Two Mothers. This was changed to Perfect Mothers. This was changed to Adore. This was changed to Adoration  for its Australian Release. It is based on a novella by Doris Lessing titled The Grandmothers.

Should this frenetic name changing lead you to the conclusion the producers weren’t sure about this film or how to market it, I imagine you’d be pretty close to the mark.

Set in a very small coastal town some hours north of Sydney, Adoration tells of the intertwining lives of two life-long friends, Lil (Naomi Watts) and Roz (Robin Wright). After a couple of brief scenes showing the friends in their younger years, the film picks up their story as the women enter middle age.

Lil is widowed; Roz married to her long time husband Harold (Ben Mendelsohn). Tom (James Frecheville) is the strapping son of Roz, Ian (Xavier Samuel) is the strapping son of Lil. Tom and Ian are best friends, surfers and spend most of their lives with their shirts off. Tom and Ian start having affairs with each other’s mother.

The first of many problems with this film is that the story never rang true. We are expected to believe that after being married for presumably 20 odd years and enjoying a warm rapport with his wife, ‘New Age’ Harold would apply for a job in Sydney without telling his family. Having been offered the job but finding Roz rejects the opportunity to move, he then upsticks and decamps to the big city leaving his wife, son and apparently idyllic lifestyle behind – this at a time when most men would probably be looking for a seachange and moving the other way.

Roz then begins a relationship with Ian, instigated by him. In an act of aggrieved retaliation, Tom initiates an affair with Lil. Love blossoms. The film fasts forward two years. The lovebirds continue. Tom heads for Sydney.

These people seem to live in a cocoon. Despite living in a small community, we are led to believe there is no gossip, no knowledge in the outside world of their liaisons. The only outsider allowed to intrude into this ménage à quatre is Lil’s spurned suitor Saul (Gary Sweet) who assumes the two women are having a lesbian affair and disappears in a humiliated huff.

The characters were all so thinly drawn and interchangeable, it was sometimes difficult to remember who was having sex with whom: was Ian Lil’s son or Roz’s? Fortunately, Roz’s accent slipping into unexplained Texas drawl helped differentiate her from her friend. Xavier Samuel, now fast approaching 30, will surely be wishing to move away from teenage beach bum roles – he played similar in his last film, Drift; James Frecheville, so good in Animal Kingdom, never looked entirely comfortable.

The script from Christopher Hampton failed on more than one level – this from the man who penned both Dangerous Liaisons and Atonement. It was full of cheesy ‘God! You’re beautiful’ type lines and much of the dialogue between the characters was to explain facets about themselves which they would have imparted at the start of a relationship, not twenty or forty years after its formation.

Direction from Anne Fontaine was competent and cinematography was generally well done – perhaps the panning shot showing the beach emerging from the bush was overused a couple of times.  The film’s locations were always easy on the eye.

The film was released in Australia the same week that the Nobel Prize for Literature winner Doris Lessing died. It is difficult to believe that the story she wrote bears any resemblance to the filmed version. But if I’m wrong, then the scriptwriters to Home and Away should book their flights to Stockholm, because this film is pure, unadulterated, sub-standard soap opera.

2.5 stars

Tim Meade