AN AMERICAN AFFAIR EXPLOITS THE KENNEDY ASSASSINATION
In a story that could be compared with The Reader (2008), directed by William Olsson, a teenage schoolboy approaches an older woman with sex on his mind but gets caught in a deeper plot than he realizes. The boy, Adam Stafford (played by Cameron Bright), attends a Catholic school, Holy Cross, in 1963 at a time in his life when sexual identities are being formed, albeit awkwardly. His parents (Perrey Reeves and Noah Wyle) are journalists who are treating him as a child whereas he wants some space to adolesce. Out of his bedroom window he spies uncovered breasts on a beautiful woman, Catherine Caswell (played by Gretchen Mol), who has recently moved into the neighborhood. Adam jumps to the occasion by reading her mail and then proposing to work odd jobs for her. She finds an odd job—clearing all vegetation in the back yard to make way for something new. When his parents find that he is working for her, his mother disapproves but his father allows him to continue so long as he does not stay with her beyond the work required. It seems that Catherine has a bad reputation from which their son must be protected, and Adam hears a few clues about her past. Accordingly, he follows her in a secret meeting with a top CIA agent, Lucian Carver (played by James Rebhorn), and her former husband Charlie (played by Kris Arnold) drags him into her house in a rage after discovering him in the alley outside her home one night. In a chance encounter Carver and Charlie meet with a Cuban named Del Valle (played by Gerry Paradiso). In a conversation between Carver and Catherine, there is a hint of an assignation plot involving JFK. After the assassination, the film, ends with an unexplained tragedy, suggesting that the CIA is up to dirty tricks as ever, but the film ends just when the plot becomes interesting. MH