The Story of Adele H.

Adele is a character with very charming beauty and an elegance that can only be described as soft and graceful. At least this was the way she appeared at the beginning of the movie. There was much room for her to grow and become a full, open character but instead, she becomes obsessed and downtrodden after she travels to Halifax and finds out that Lieutenant Pinson is not in love with her. As the movie progresses, so does the character and by the end of the film, in Barbados, she simply "floats" around the village and does not talk. She becomes nothing but a ghost of her former self - she becomes a ghost that is meant to haunt Lt. Pinson, but she never literally dies, so she cannot even do that. She is so downtrodden by her own obsession that she destroys herself and goes into seclusion for the rest of her life.

The film gives this sense of haunting, unrequited love with the use of deep bold colors contrasted against Adele's ever-whitening face. It shows how out-of-touch with reality she is. When other characters come into play, for example Lt. Pinson, she is in a different place than him and the others around her. For instance, while in Barbados, she sees him talking to another girl and he sees her staring at them. He then follows her but she just drifts through the streets and does not respond to him. He almost seems like a child then, because he is simply confounded as to why she is acting this way. Not to imply that he was a shallow person, but rather, he defiantly did not delve into the aspect of love as deeply as she did. In her own world, she created something that could not be brought about in the world she was actually living in. That is what no one could understand.