- Composed by Christopher Gordon
- Additional music by Antony Partos
- Varèse Sarabande / 2013 / 45m
Adore sees Robin Wright and Naomi Watts play a pair of lifelong friends who each stumble into relationships with the other’s son. It’s the English-language début of director Anne Fontaine, and was made in Australia; that nation’s premiere film composer Christopher Gordon provides the score, his first in a couple of years. His elegant music is sumptuous, making an instant impact in the beautiful opening cue, a dreamy piano solo ebbing and flowing with plucked strings and harp, a wash of bowed strings like a comforting underbelly. The main theme is full of class: the beauty exists over pretty complex drama, and the same melody is turned into something very different in later cues. The deliberate pace of “Uncertainty” sees little bits of light emerge from moments of darkness, beautifully expressing an emotional challenge.
I’m not sure what circumstances led to it, but there’s a fair amount of music here written by a different composer, Antony Partos. Cues by him are scattered through the album (almost a third of the running time in his); oddly, despite being composed in a very different style (think Jones and Edelman on Last of the Mohicans), it is not a jarring listening experience – the material by Partos is more punchy, written for a smaller ensemble, with more than a hint of Thomas Newman. But there’s no doubting the star of the show and that’s Gordon – the way he musically expresses intimacy and lust, the way initial doubts are gradually resolved is tremendously accomplished. The cathartic “Beach Walk” is one of the most impressive pieces of film music I’ve heard in some time. Gordon’s music is simply ravishing. Impressive album.
Rating: ****
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