The description of this movie on Netflix was right, and at the same time so wrong. It described it as a kid (Adam) who gets a crush on his neighbor (Catherine) and he really likes her...blah blah blah. All of that is true, but there's so much more to it than that.
Ill start out with the obvious plot point they left out, Catherine is having an affair with President Kennedy and its shortly before he is killed. Huge bombshell there, suddenly the movie went from a coming of age story, which it was, kind of, but then became a political thriller of sorts. But before I go much further I will start from the beginning.
Adam seems to be somewhat of a closed off loner, he sets up his friend to get into a fight in the school yard just so then he can see people hit each other. There's a girl that he likes, but he doesn't know how to handle that whole situation (we never did) When he sees Catherine and what she does with many different men he steals some of her mail to get to know her better, and when snooping around her house is caught and tells her hes looking for some after school work.
She puts him to work in her garden and on the surface it all appears pretty normal, but the sick thing is that she knows what he thinks of her and doesn't mind, in fact she encourages it even to the point of letting him watch her have sex (he's in the closet but she knows he's there) She does drugs and doesn't hide it from him, she even brings him into her world of painting, which in that we learn the most about her. Besides what we learn about her through her art she is mostly a mystery to the audience, and I like that.
As the story goes on and Adam starts to get a little to curious he ends up spying on the wrong kinds of people, and when Kennedy is killed he starts to really get himself into some trouble.
It was a strange little movie, the morals and ethics of the characters were muddled to say the least, and you never really get any of the characters. The acting though is still very good, I think for what the script must have been the actors did the best, but as it was a dark story. I think they needed to shoot it a little darker in both image and tone, or get a different director who could have twisted it a little more.
The end resolution come quick and out of the feeling of the rest of the movie, and that sort of upset me, if they would have made the rest of the movie feel darker and more threatening then the ending would have been a great exclamation point. But since they took on the rest of the film differently it just seemed out of place. I did like how they dealt with the CIA and how as a new agency in the country it was very scary, hell its still scary now.
It didn't really offer anything new, and it was not handled well enough, so for that I give it a 6/10, but a high six. There were some good scenes and some cool shots, but again it wasn't anything new.
Director: William Olsson
Starring: Gretchen Mol, Cameron Bright, James Rebhorn
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