Shades of Twilight’s vampire romance haunt this sweetly soppy fantasy pitched somewhere between the conceit of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, the literary longing of The Time Traveler’s Wife and the outright silliness of The Lake House. Gossip Girl star Blake Lively is the timeless Adaline, forever 29 since a sci-fi accident involving freezing water and a lightning bolt (explained away in a giggle-inducing deadpan voiceover) made her unable to age. Afraid of becoming a medical curiosity, Adaline retreats from the world, regularly changing her identity, shunning any emotional attachments beyond her link with the daughter who soon outgrows her. But when hunky philanthropist Ellis Jones (Michiel Huisman) won’t take no for an answer, the enigmatic ice queen’s armour begins to melt.
For all the foolishness of its premise, this is unexpectedly enjoyable, boosted by some on-the-money support from Ellen Burstyn as Adaline’s ageing daughter, and Harrison Ford as Ellis’s palpably thunderstruck father. While the “young” couple may teeter upon blandness, these older players exert enough gravitational force to drag us into the film’s sphere of star-crossed (and star-gazing) influence. Lively does a good line in aloof, and if Huisman never convinces as the object of her desire then the narrative’s peripheral relations more than fill the emotional gap.
