Adam
Hugh Dancy stars as a New Yorker with Asperger's syndrome who, after losing his father, begins a tentative relationship with a neighbour in his apartment block. Rose Byrne co-stars
A love story that tries extremely hard not to turn itself into a 'disability' movie, Adam is a sensitively hewn film from start to finish. While the likes of Rain Man and A Beautiful Mind could be accused of presenting those with, respectively, autism or schizophrenia as eccentric geniuses, Max Mayer's film tries not to make that mistake. Rather, its protagonist, Adam Raki (Hugh Dancy) who suffers from Asperger's syndrome, is an ordinary New Yorker, living in an apartment that belonged to his recently deceased father. For those who don't know, Asperger's syndrome is an autism spectrum disorder whereby sufferers show significant difficulties in social interaction, demonstrate repetitive behaviourial patterns and even the inability to perceive what others are thinking. Right from the off, Mayer shows how Asperger's manifests itself in Adam, with his freezer stacked full of TV dinners and his rigorous routines at home and in his job as an electronic engineer. But when he loses his position, things start to change for him. Partly this comes when he meets the buoyant brunette Beth Buchwald (Rose Byrne), who moves into his building. Initially, she's confused by his rather standoffish behaviour around her, but when she discovers he has Asperger's - and begins to understand what this means - finds herself drawn to him. This results in some touching moments as Adam literally fumbles and stumbles his way through the courtship process. Things which we all take for granted, like making emotional and physical contact with another human, is akin to climbing Everest for someone like Adam. Forced to meet Beth's friends at a party (a good chance for Mayer to show Adam reeling off scientific data in the film's closest moment to Rain Man), he just about survives that before he is introduced to Beth's parents (Peter Gallagher and Amy Irving). Both view Adam warily but their feelings are tempered by the fact that Beth's father, an accountant, is to stand trial for corporate malpractice. Hinging on the 'will they, won't they' paradigm that is the universal rule for all romantic comedies, Adam is pleasingly lacking in sentimentality. The moments that do veer in that direction - such as Adam, who is obsessed with the cosmos, creating a homemade planetarium for Beth - are touching not trite, and Mayer's script even offers the odd surprise. Like his only other film, 1998's Better Living, he once again concentrates on paternal absence and how that can impact on the individual - but expands it to examine how a present father can also cause problems. With Australian actress Byrne providing able support, what makes Adam so watchable is the understated Hugh Dancy. Whether he's frustrated, angry, horny or sad, Dancy's Adam is empathetically rendered, done so it never descends into the sort of overblown Oscar-baiting performance that many actors playing 'disabled' characters are guilty of. Like the film itself, it's a classy piece of acting that deserves to be seen. Verdict A charming, quietly satisfying work, Adam is a commendable film. Sensitively written and directed by Mayer, it's given shape and dimensionality by Dancy, who delivers a tremendous performance that lends the film genuine humanity. |
