Description
Quirky romantic comedy starring Hugh Dancy and Rose Byrne. Adam (Dancy) is a man with Asperger’s Syndrome who continues to go through the motions of his supremely ordered lifestyle following the recent death of his father. When beautiful young writer Beth (Byrne) moves into his building, Adam’s obsessive nature leads him to become infatuated with her. Beth, still reeling from a recent break-up, responds tentatively to Adam’s endearingly awkward advances – but can there be any real future to their relationship?
Adam is not a typical romantic comedy. The death of his father leaves Adam (Hugh Dancy, Confessions of a Shopaholic) living alone in the apartment they shared. When a friendly young woman named Beth (Rose Byrne, Damages) moves into the building, Adam doesn’t know how to express his attraction–he has Asperger’s Syndrome, a form of high-functioning autism that prevents common human empathy. So he invites her into his apartment to experience his homemade planetarium and takes her to the park in the middle of the night to look at raccoons. Despite herself, Beth is intrigued. At first she’s baffled by Adam, but when she learns the source of his awkwardness, she starts to appreciate Adam’s honesty and lack of guile–particularly as family secrets start to emerge when her father (Peter Gallagher, The O.C.) is indicted for financial misdoings. Just as the nature of Asperger’s Syndrome lifts Adam from the ranks of conventional romance, the committed and thoughtful performances by Dancy and Byrne keep Adam from being a disease-of-the-week movie or yet another “”mental handicap”” flick. The movie treats the problems of such a romance honestly, but also sees a kind of hope in the way these two grapple with their difficulties. Also featuring Amy Irving (Bossa Nova, Carrie). –Bret Fetzer, store
