Affection Review: Jessica Rothe's Sci-Fi Mystery Can't Live Up To Its Initial Promise

Affection's enigmatic opening sequence is both a blessing and a curse. We're dropped in with a woman lying injured in the road after an accident, and what follows is a quick string of interesting choices, each their own turn in the scene that inspires a set of new questions. As a hook, its effect is instantaneous, not only setting the tone but making a promise about what kind of movie this will be – from the beginning, we're set up to expect a layered mystery, told with a certain control and capable of surprising us.

The rest of the film doesn't quite live up to that promise. Strongest when at its most withholding, Affection's attempt to shift gears halfway through lets the intrigue dissipate in favor of openly engaging with ideas that the script simply isn't ready to explore, and from there, its uneven execution is far more glaring. It does shine in moments, and Jessica Rothe's lead performance is compelling enough to keep us from checking out when it drags, but the film suffers in comparison to those early expectations. However conflicted my feelings about Affection are, I am certain that it was not as good as I'd hoped it would be.

Jessica Rothe's Complex Performance Gives Affection Some Real Depth

After the opening sequence cuts to black just as it seems like a car has run the woman down, seemingly that same woman wakes up in bed in distress. She cautiously makes her way downstairs, with no memory of where she is or how she got there. The man who was next to her in bed follows her, claiming to be her husband and calling her by a name she doesn't recognize. She strikes him with a fireplace tool and prepares to run for it, only for a crying young girl calling her mommy to appear on the stairwell.

According to Bruce (Joseph Cross), Allie (Rothe) has a condition. Her tendency to not merely forget their life together, but to invent an entirely different one for herself that feels completely real, has led this little family to relocate out to the sticks, cut off from the outside world. She may remember a different name, different husband, a different job, and a son, but her real history will come back to her in time. Allie has a hard time believing him, but little Alice's (Julianna Layne) certainty that she is her mother (and her pain at the lack of recognition she can see in her eyes) is far more convincing.

This early stretch is Affection's best. Rothe brings a real complexity to this experience of a startling amount of dissonance, and watching Allie's conflicting emotions play out on her face is its own joy. The mystery, too, gets more intriguing as details accumulate. There's too much evidence for Bruce's story to be a flat-out lie, but something clearly isn't right. There's a strange mark on Allie's back, near her neck; she's got a tremor in her hand, something she also had in the opening that, so far, hasn't been referenced at all. I was eagerly tuned into every clue, every shift in expectation – until about halfway into the runtime, when Allie uncovers the truth.

I won't spoil the reveal, except to say that it's an interesting concept in itself. The film showed an interest in reaching for some of the more complex questions about memory early on, and it's able to lean into genre to expand on them – at least, that's how it's supposed to work. But aside from losing the thrill of discovery, writer-director BT Meza has made a couple grave miscalculations that throw Affection off its game from this point onward.

Affection Misunderstands The Kind Of Movie It Needs To Be

Firstly, the characters simply aren't ready for this drastic a switch in function. Allie and Bruce are both to an extent underdeveloped, and while that works fine in the early sections of a mystery, it's hard to draw much meaning from their behavior if we don't have a grasp on the context of their decisions. For Rothe, this is mostly a consequence of the film focusing on outlining who Allie is supposed to be, rather than who she currently is. We don't really understand her values, nor are we given an opportunity to see how she has processed this shocking truth. She drives the plot forward, but there aren't new layers of thematic interest that grow from her actions.

Bruce suffers in a different way; from the outset, the character isn't calibrated properly. Part of it is surely in how he's written, but Cross' performance is disappointingly limited, especially in comparison to Rothe's. In different hands, Bruce had the potential to be both memorable and unsettling, as well as the most significant nexus for the film's ideas. In fact, it's largely because he ends up so one-note that Affection doesn't find new depth in its second half.

The other major error is more difficult to look past. After the reveal, the movie takes on a thriller structure, trying to derive tension from putting multiple moving pieces in play. The most important developments become which character end up where, and who knows something that the other doesn't. Though there are some quality moments that emerge from this approach, Affection just isn't "thrilling" enough to make this work. The sheer amount of time that a certain, very slow-moving character is filmed, as if their shambling is somehow captivating, is evidence enough.

I wish Meza had doubled down on the instincts that drove the first half, and structured the second around conversations. There is a brief moment, deep into the film, when Allie and Bruce actually start talking openly about what he had tried to hide, and it suddenly finds new life. These characters have a great deal to say to each other, and even one substantial dialogue could have fleshed out their characters and complicated the movie's themes. Bursts of action would be natural, but Affection is ultimately a heady film, not an exciting one. By trying to force itself into a shape that doesn't suit it, it robs us of any real, compelling material to chew on.