["The Story of Adele H."] is the recreation of a passion, but the passion entertained by this particular woman in love … is seen not as desire or ecstasy, or with even a glimpse of mutuality, but as a dark and one-sided obsession, a pursuit remorselessly undertaken, with the female stalking the male, almost literally, to the ends of the earth…. Truffaut asks us to understand Adele's situation without identifying directly. This approach seems more logical in a Brechtian parable like [Schloendorff and von Trotta's] "The Lost Honor of Katharine Blum" than in a love story, which is what makes the Truffaut film so fascinating, but ultimately more as a tribute to an experience than as an experience itself….

A French audience, for whom Leopoldine is a familiar name and the figure of Hugo is almost as oppressive as it is for Adele, would see that Adele's journey to...