An American Affair
2009
An American Affair kicks off with an intriguing premise. It's the early 1960s
in Washington, D.C. - Camelot time. An eighth grader becomes intrigued by his sexy neighbor
when he catches a glimpse of her sitting topless near one of her windows.
Aroused and wanting more, he starts to lose sleep by keeping his eyes peeled at all hours of the
night for more nudity, and he even acquires a pair of binoculars to make the
whole premise work a lot more like Rear Window, and we begin to suspect he
will witness a crime. He does not see any more
nudity, nor does he see a crime committed, but he definitely sees something he
should not. One night, in the wee hours, the neighbor receives a booty call
from none other
than President John F. Kennedy!
Some clever writers in a screenwriting competition might be able to create
a score of great movies by taking that same premise in twenty different
directions. Unfortunately, none of those fellows worked on this film. American
Affair soon degenerates into a wild-eyed entry in the JFK assassination genre,
and is filled with
touches that are downright loony, like the way the young Peeping Tom skulks
around familiar Washington landmarks, and hides behind the columns in stately
Georgian colonnades, from which vantage he is easily able to eavesdrop
on expert CIA spooks. Even loonier is the way he gains possession of a secret diary
which proves that the CIA and anti-Castro Cubans killed Kennedy. Good thing
this kid wasn't on the Russian payroll.
Meanwhile, the kid's regular parochial school life also continues to move
forward and follows the usual path of the "baby boomer coming of age" genre.
The film's two genres do not marry happily. It is in the nature of
coming-of-age dramas to be realistic and close to the bone, with small details
carefully realized. We have to believe the main characters because that genre
only works when we can establish some kind of connection to our own
experiences. In that respect, this film fails in spades, because that sort of
small, personal story is layered into wacky geopolitics, wackier characters, and
still wackier conspiracy
theories, resulting in not a single credible moment in the film. There is
no element of the film which is free from contrivance and artificiality: not the boy's relationship
with his sexy neighbor, not his interaction with his schoolmates, not his
interaction with his parents, and especially not his interaction with JFK's
killers (who, implausibly enough, include the ex-husband of the sexy
neighbor.)
My favorite scene? When JFK's assassination is announced on TV, the kid
wanders into the apartment of the sexy neighbor. She is absolutely overcome
with grief (she loved JFK, as in true love), so the boy does what any of us
would do in the same circumstances. He kisses her passionately and grabs her
breasts.
No, wait. My favorite scene would actually have to be the finale, when the
guys who killed JFK also kill the sexy neighbor because she knows too much,
and also burn her diary to tie up all the loose ends. That part of the story
was loosely inspired by the life of Mary Meyer, a real Washingtonian who had
an affair with JFK and was killed within a year of Kennedy's death. Those plot
twists could
have seemed sensible if the film been a pure political thriller, but the
script also had to wrap up the coming-of-age
portion of the plot. In order to accomplish that, the author had the CIA
spooks simply leave the 13-year-old kid alone with the neighbor's dead body,
even though he had read the diary and knew that the CIA killed both his
fantasy woman and the President of the United States.
Oh, and did I mention that both of the kid's parents were prize-winning
investigative journalists?
Yeah, I guess the CIA wrapped that right up, just like a present under this
crazy Christmas tree we call life.
- 5.0 at IMDb
- It played in two theaters at the end of February and grossed a whopping
$28,000.
- Despite the limited distro it was reviewed by many major print sources,
and currently scores 18% at Rotten Tomatoes
- And 31/100 at Metacritic
Nudity report:
This movie is utterly silly, but how can you not enjoy a film with
Gretchen Mol topless? She may not ever have blossomed into "the next big
thing," as predicted in the late 90s, but I still love her! (And the quality of
the clip is not so bad.)
One sample below, made by someone else from a
different version of the video.
