Posted: 07/14/2009

An American Affair

by Heather Trow

The short-lived Presidency of John F. Kennedy was surrounded by mystery. From his first day in office to his assassination, scandals, cover-ups, political blunders and fascinating rumors were abound. An American Affair attempts to cash in on some of these mysteries, but does not succeed.

The movie tells the story of Adam Stafford (Cameron Bright, best remembered for his eerie turn in Birth alongside Nicole Kidman). Adam is a teenager trapped in a monotonous existence, who is obsessed with his beautiful neighbor, Catherine Caswell (Gretchen Mol).

The movie spends far too much time elaborating on Adam’s miserable existence. In unnecessary, hackneyed sequences, Adam endures the hells of Catholic school. He is constantly in trouble with his teacher, Sister Mary Eunice (Lisa Lisbeth-Finney), who informs him “In the eyes of God, all sinners can be redeemed- I see things differently.”

In response to his life woes, Adam goes home at night and pulls out his camera and binoculars and spies on Catherine, an artist who has a mysterious relationship with President Kennedy. After opening her mail and reading it, Adam decides it’s time to introduce himself to Catherine, and offers his services in her garden. She orders him to tear out her landscaping, she is going to start a new garden from scratch.

Adam doesn’t bother to conceal his stalking at all. He follows Catherine to mysterious meetings with CIA agents, sneaks into her bedroom and hides in her closet, where he watches her have sex. Catherine, for her part, is either so oblivious to life around her that she doesn’t realize how far Adam’s interest extends, or she enjoys being obsessed over and so indulges Adam’s fetish. Unfortunately, the script, written by Alex Metcalf, doesn’t ever explain why she allows Adam into her life so completely. She spills her life secrets to him as they sit on her couch, they drink whiskey together and paint.

Meanwhile, Adam’s parents are a world of contradictions. At first we think they just ignore him, preferring to give dinner parties for eclectic guests, discussing politics in snide tones. However, a few scenes later Adam’s mother, Adrienne, (Perrey Reeves) laments about how he never talks to them anymore. Adam’s parents are both journalists, have met the President, and know all about Catherine Caswell and her PAST. “Stay away from that woman,” Adrienne says ominously.

The movie spirals in a strange, unwanted direction with the appearance of Catherine’s ex-husband, Graham (Mark Pellegrino). He is also in the CIA and knows that Catherine is a liability, but is unable to persuade her to stop seeing the President. “You try to break her, see how far you get,” he informs Lucian Carver (the underused but wonderful James Rebhorn), another CIA agent who is keeping a close eye on Catherine. Graham is temperamental and spends most of the movie screaming at Catherine about how reckless and foolish she is. But in his final scene, he tells her his life is incomplete without her and he needs her to continue living. Catherine, who for her part has spent the movie sneering at his tirades, tells him she will consider it.

As his assassination nears, President Kennedy stops seeing Catherine. She desperately tries to warn him about the whisperings she hears from Lucian and Graham and a Cuban mafioso named Del Valle, but it is to no avail. Catherine has kept diaries concerning her relationship with Kennedy since she was a child (they went to school together), and Lucian warns Graham that these diaries make her a target.

Kennedy’s assassination forces Lucian to take action. He takes possession of Catherine’s diary and has Catherine killed. Adam discovers her dead body as the camera cuts to images of President Kennedy’s funeral. It is perhaps the most interesting statement the movie makes, that the audience sees Catherine’s death coming a mile away. We know she will be killed, just like we know that we’ll never truly understand what happened to President John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

The movie wants so badly to make statements about the Kennedy administration. It dances around the conspiracies and rumors, hesitantly and ineptly trying to make a connection between Cuban interests and the assassination, but because it is so mired in the story at hand, these ideas are lost. The movie wants to be a conspiracy theory, and it also wants to be a story about an unlikely friendship, but it fails at both attempts. For her part, Mol is excellent. She can’t quite make the script work but she knows better than to try too hard. Her understated charisma is the only thing that makes the movie watchable. Bright showed such promise as a child, but is lost at sea in this movie. He struggles to find a way to negotiate through the stormy waters of his character’s depression and creepy obsession, but doesn’t give enough and winds up blending in with the scenery. The other actors in the film suffer much the same fate, getting lost in the dull, stiff dialogue. All in all, the movie simply doesn’t work because it tries to be too many things at once. Without enough suspense and drama, the movie falls flat.

Heather Trow Heather H. Trow is an actress, writer and alternative comedy enthusiast. She lives in Chicago.

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