KARACHI: A true story that ends in tragedy tends to tug at the heart-strings of most viewers. And when the person is the daughter of a famous writer who searched the world to find her, the story becomes even more poignant. Such is the case with Histoire d’Adele H or ‘History of Adele H,’ a French film directed by Francois Traffaut, which was screened at the Alliance Francaise on Friday.

Adele, the daughter of Victor Hugo, author of Les Miserables and other famous works, falls in love with Pinson, an army lieutenant, disapproved of by her parents. He is posted to Canada, where she follows him and discovers that he is engaged to another girl. She is obsessed with him and follows him everywhere and loses her mind in the process.

Histoire d’Adele H is a period film that takes us to Halifax, Nova Scotia in the 1860s. It is a sad, haunting movie focusing on unrequited, obsessive love. Played beautifully by Isabella Adjani, Adele is portrayed as a very strong-willed person whose strong obsession takes her away from reality and reason, making judgments which she would not have otherwise made.

This is a film which would not be popular with the average cine-goer as it focuses on the true story of a person and the period surrounding her. It is a movie for history lovers, fans of Victor Hugo and serious-minded people. Like all period films, it emphasizes facts and doesn’t leave room for too much romance and action, as is the rage of today’s movies.

Adele, the youngest of the four children of Victor Hugo, a national hero in his lifetime, was doted on by her father who called her Dede. She was vivacious and intelligent and had the seeds of a writer, which she had inherited from her father. She spent a very happy childhood and had a very strong mind. This, perhaps, is the main reason for her downfall as she went after a person her parents disapproved of enormously.

Pinson obviously had a way with women. He was a soldier, dashing, having a way with words, and thus easily capturing the hearts of the fairer sex, as seen in the film.

What happened to Adele is one of the greatest mysteries of literary history, discreetly left out by biographers of Victor Hugo. It is said that she was not discovered in Singapore by a British couple, but was found in New York by the police and sent to Paris. In the film she goes to Barbados, when a local woman, discovering who she is, brings her back to France to be reunited with her father. He had her placed in a sanatorium for the rich, where she lived comfortably till her death.

Adele outlived all her family and died a very rich woman at the age of 85, inheriting her father’s enormous wealth. The tragic and grotesque events in Les Miserables perhaps cannot match the terrible events that Hugo’s daughter went through, after living a very privileged life.