The Age of Adaline (12A, 113 mins)

Starring: Blake Lively, Michiel Huisman, Harrison Ford, Kathy Baker, Ellen Burstyn, Cate Richardson.

Director: Lee Toland Krieger.

Released: May 8 (UK & Ireland)

THE Age Of Adaline is a rose-tinted fairy story for every image-obsessed Hollywood actress.

Lee Toland Krieger's swooning romance centres on a beautiful woman, who is "immune to the ravages of time" and retains her twenty-something radiance for almost eight decades without the intervention of a plastic surgeon or Botox jab.

She defies wrinkles, crow's feet and the relentless pull of gravity to remain forever young while the world around her withers and rusts.

If the catalyst for this miracle - a car crash on snow-laden roads followed by a plunge into sub-zero water and a lightning bolt strike - could be replicated in a Californian hospital, you suspect that at least one starlet would volunteer as a guinea pig to test the outlandish theory.

However, with great beauty comes great responsibility and sadness.

The eponymous heroine of Krieger's film cannot allow anyone to get close, who might reveal her secret.

As one character, who does stumble upon the truth, solemnly observes: "All these years, you've lived but you've not had a life."

When death is no longer the full stop to your glorious existence, how can you appreciate every lesson learnt, every moment of regret or hard-fought victory?

Basingstoke Gazette:

In 1937, Adaline Bowman (Blake Lively) is the victim of a freak accident, which condemns her to remain 29 years old.

Her daughter Flemming (Cate Richardson) grows up, forcing Adaline to dodge uncomfortable questions about her glowing appearance.

She resolves to live alone and to change her identity and home every decade.

On New Year's Eve, almost 80 years after the fateful accident, Adaline meets handsome San Francisco philanthropist, Ellis Jones (Michiel Huisman).

He woos Adaline and persuades her to accompany him to his parents' 40th wedding anniversary party.

She walks into the Jones homestead and comes face to face with Ellis' father William (Harrison Ford), who takes one look at his son's sweetheart and gasps: "Adaline!"

Basingstoke Gazette:

He is her long-lost beau from the 1960s, who she abandoned without explanation.

Adaline is distraught and tells her daughter that there can be no future to her relationship with Ellis.

"What are you talking about?" despairs Flemming (now played by Ellen Burstyn). "You've got nothing but future!"

The Age Of Adaline gently plucks heartstrings as the time-defying protagonist struggles to let Ellis into her unedifying existence.

Director Krieger employs a gushing voiceover to fill in the gaps in Adaline's past.

This florid and unintentionally hilarious narration risks derailing the entire, sticky-sweet enterprise.

Thankfully, Lively delivers a measured performance and she kindles simmering screen chemistry with Huisman.

Ford is terrific as the emotionally scarred patriarch, who fears he is losing his grip on sanity, grounding the film in tear-stained reality, while the rest of the script demands dizzying suspensions of disbelief.

6/10

Damon Smith