About Adam

Despite Kate Hudson's erratic accent, you can tell this is an Irish film because the characters have sex with their clothes on. Hudson is otherwise puckish and coy as Lucy, the first of several Dublin siblings to be seduced by the titular lothario (Stuart Townsend) in this strained romantic comedy from Gerard Stembridge. Herself the non-committal type, Lucy ends up yearning for the altar when she lays eyes on the protean Adam and his turquoise Jaguar. Unfortunately -- or perhaps not -- just about everybody else in her family falls for him as well: her bookish younger sister Laura (an ebullient Frances O'Connor), her older, unhappily married sister Alice (an elegant and simmering Charlotte Bradley), even her virginal brother and his girlfriend. It sounds a lot like Pier Paolo Pasolini's acid sexual satire Teorema, or Renoir's Boudu Saved from Drowning by way of Down and Out in Beverly Hills. But Townsend is no Terence Stamp or even Nick Nolte, and with Hudson showcased in the golden Gwyneth Paltrow role and the film offering repeated versions (from each seducee's point of view) of the same tale, it's kind of like Sliding Bedroom Doors. Screens tonight at 7:45 and 10:10 p.m.

-- Peter Keough

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Film Festival Feature Films

Shadow of the Vampire | Songcatcher | Venus Beauty Institute | What's Cooking? | The Broken Hearts Club | Envy | Goya in Bordeaux | Human Resources | Skipped Parts | Amargosa | Henry Hill | Relative Values | The Rising Place | The Contender | Pitch People | Roof to Roof | Four Dogs Playing Poker | Reckless Indifference | Requiem for a Dream | Shadow Magic | About Adam | Charming Billy | Enemies of Laughter | Into the Arms of Strangers | Running on the Sun | A Trial in Prague | Harry, He's Here to Help | A Man is Mostly Water | Seven Girlfriends

Also, Boston Film Festival short films