THERE'S NO denying that this largely harmless picture drips with good intentions. Detailing the romance between a young chap with Asperger syndrome and the pretty teacher who lives downstairs, Adamargues for tolerance, forbearance and all that stuff. It shows evidence of serious research and features strong performances from Hugh Dancy and Rose Byrne. Sadly, it is also fuelled on cliché and, for all its decency, offers an utterly bogus treatment of the protagonist's condition.
Coming across like that ancient Goldie Hawn vehicle Butterflies Are Free– in which the flighty heroine moves in next to a blind fellow – the picture begins with Byrne carting her bags into a respectable apartment building in New York City. She soon makes friends with Adam, who works in the research department of a toy company, and, even after realising he has a condition that limits his capacity for empathy, feels able to embark on a faltering, but functional romantic relationship.
Occasionally, Adam blurts out inappropriate truths at cocktail parties. Sometimes he takes undue offense at minor strategic untruths. But, as events progress, it begins to look as if they might make the affair work.
Mayer overturns every ancient stone in his attempts to disinter all the hoary conventions of the genre. As expected, Adam has several extraordinary mental gifts and exhibits an untutored ability to see through the flim-flam of social convention. He, of course, has a passion for staring meaningfully at the stars. Equally inevitably, his best pal is a middle-aged African- American with a taste for mildly risque jokes. Which perennially caddish actor will play Rose’s disapproving father? Why, it’s Peter Gallagher.
All this cliché would be forgivable if the film were not so unrelenting in its desire to make Adam’s condition bend to the will of Hollywood custom. Early on, the script makes it very clear that people with Asperger syndrome adore familiarity and resist change. Yet the mainstream romantic flick insists that its characters “move on” and “get over themselves”.
It hardly needs to be said what wins in the battle between verisimilitude and the demands of the three-act structure.
Adam ** Directed by Max Mayer. Starring Hugh Dancy, Rose Byrne, Peter Gallagher, Amy Irving 15A cert, Cineworld, Dublin, 99 min
