An American Affair (2009) Critic Reviews

The film rises above its conventions. Just when it seems to be a fable of sexual initiation, An American Affair pivots away from sex. Just when it seems to be a re-dredging of the Kennedy mystique, it pushes past history. Thoughtfully and imperfectly, it dramatizes the flight from childhood, the surrender to adulthood and the pieces of us that survive.Read the full review

A mess of a film that can't quite figure out what it wants to be: an illicit love story, a political thriller or a coming-of-age set pieceRead the full review

A coming-of-age tale and a JFK assassination conspiracy movie. The first half of that equation works nicely...But the assassination story line is absurd.Read the full review

An American Affair is sordid business blandly portrayed and not worth meddling with.Read the full review

Like many aspects of An American Affair, the music and the lopsided dramatic priorities take the viewer right out of the movie.Read the full review

Were it a farce instead of an earnest, paranoid thriller with pretensions to historicity, An American Affair might not seem so offensively exploitative. The fact that it is quite well acted, especially by Ms. Mol, who has the air of a sophisticated 1960s party animal down pat, only compounds the insult.Read the full review