The Age Of Adaline, directed by Lee Toland Krieger, has at first glance much in common with a Nicholas Sparks product.

It’s not an adaptation of one of his novels, but it has many of the same ingredients. It is a tale of lasting love, of years of devotion and prolonged separation, with a frisson of the miraculous. It also has a pseudo-scientific twist that involves sparks – a lightning bolt, to be precise. And a comet.

Its title character is played by Blake Lively, an actress whose name doesn’t quite fit her style. There’s an appealing somnambulism about her performance here, a graceful resignation that suits the embalmed, preserved-in-amber nature of her character’s lot.

Our heroine, Adaline Bowman, is a young woman who suddenly becomes, as the occasional voiceover tells us, ‘‘immune to the ravages of time’’. 

Adaline is born in 1908; she marries, has a child, is widowed, and then, on a wintry night in 1935, is involved in a car accident and a lightning strike that have unforeseen consequences. She emerges  miraculously frozen in time, never to grow old. 

For a little while, Adaline can deflect comments about her apparent agelessness, saying it’s the result of a very good skin cream she bought in Paris. But soon, it becomes too difficult to explain, and she’s on the move, changing jobs and identities. At one point she’s captured by a mysterious group of men, who look as if they are meant to be government agents from the Roswell era – but maybe sinister forces from the beauty industry were in on it too.  

Her daughter is played by various actresses, but mostly by Ellen Burstyn, and is the only person with whom she shares her secret. Burstyn, 82, is a warm presence, and she seems to be enjoying the novel experience of appearing as the daughter of a 20-something.

Eternal youth can be a curse: the best vampire movies have taught us this. And so it is for Adaline. As the decades pass, she remains on the run, shunning intimacy and leading what seems to have been a surprisingly cautious life undercover. As she makes her way though the decades, her dress sense has an elegant classic consistency, thanks to costume designer Angus Strathie (Strictly Ballroom, Moulin Rouge!). A succession of King Charles spaniels are her only companions. There are a few flashbacks and some newsreel-centred trips down memory lane, but much of the action takes place in the present, as Adaline finally takes a risk with intimacy, and faces the consequences. A handsome, wealthy philanthropist (Michiel Huisman of Nashville and Game Of Thrones) catches sight of her on New Year’s Eve, decides to pursue her, and won’t take no for an answer.        

Huisman is normally a romantic interest with an unsettling vibe, but he is hemmed in by the blandness of his role as a smitten yet considerate man. 

Harrison Ford, as a character from Adaline’s less recent past, displays more of the requisite suffering and conflicted emotions. 

The Age Of Adaline is written by Salvador Paskowitz and J.Mills Goodloe (who adapted a Sparks novel, The Best Of Me). 

Krieger – whose previous feature was Celeste & Jesse Forever, a wry break-up rom-com – bathes the film in a shimmer of gold and earnestness. It floats, like Lively herself, in a kind of timeless bubble.