Young Adam (film) - Critical Reception

Critical Reception

Philip French of The Guardian called it "a cleverly constructed film that holds the attention throughout its economical 95 minutes. The naturalistic acting has considerable power, with Tilda Swinton giving a characteristically unself-regarding performance and Ewan McGregor steering clear of easy charm. But it is a depressing film exuding hopelessness and inviting us to pity the characters rather than share in their tragic condition."

A.O. Scott of the New York Times observed, "The storytelling is deliberately disjointed, jumping back and forth in time without warning, so that the meaning of events and the connections among them emerge retrospectively. This creates a mood of unease and dislocation, a noirish dread that persists even after certain crucial mysteries are solved. The narrative scheme, the brooding period atmosphere, the understated score (by David Byrne) and the precision of the acting also make the story seem more interesting than it is. Joe, though in some ways fairly passive, is sexually voracious as well as sexually irresistible . . . In the end, Joe's sexuality, while exhibited with quite a bit more explicitness than the old movies would permit, is also what makes Young Adam feel most dated. Its view of male narcissism, as expressed through erotic need, is not only uncritical but also pretentious. The film follows the novel (and many others like it) in assuming, rather than proving, that its hero's selfishness and failure offer clues to the human condition, rather than evidence of individual limitation."

Manohla Dargis of the Los Angeles Times observed, "Unlike the novel, which is written in the first person . . . the film assumes a markedly less claustrophobic, less personal point of view. Everything happens more or less through Joe's eyes, but Mackenzie, having rejected a voice-over narration, never gets inside the character the way Martin Scorsese gets inside Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver . . . While the novel turns Joe into a question mark, Mackenzie takes a more palatable, less ambiguous approach to the character. The casting of McGregor also softens Joe. Even tamped down and without his easy smile, the actor conveys so much natural charm he's a sorry excuse for a moral void. These changes compromise the adaptation but, ironically, generally improve the story since Trocchi's existentialism has neither the heft of Jean-Paul Sartre nor the pulp pleasures of James M. Cain. Mackenzie may have realized the shortcomings in Trocchi's prose or decided he didn't want to condemn his film commercially. Whichever the case, he has greatly tempered the story's brutality the old-fashioned way: He puts an appealing, sympathetic star at the center and surrounds him with beautiful visuals, with a darkly contrasting color palette of bruising black and blue."

Carla Meyer of the San Francisco Chronicle thought Tilda Swinton's "rich, compelling performance is reason enough to see this uneven picture, which devolves from a riveting romantic triangle to a morality tale without a moral center . . . McGregor has trouble negotiating the role of a man playing at life. He excels at showing the writer's vanity (in captain's hat and jacket, McGregor looks like a rent boy), but not what makes him tick."

Mike Clark of USA Today noted, "This movie is so much the opposite of uplifting that you think Gary Oldman ought to be in it. But it's honestly made, and its second half does linger in the memory."

Derek Elley of Variety called the film "strongly cast" and "a resonant, beautifully modulated relationships drama" that "establishes Mackenzie as an accessible stylist within mid-range British cinema.