The film revolves around the suburban housewife Gertrude Banizevsky. This woman tried to have a unique experience when she decided to keep a teenage girl in the basement of her home in Indiana during the 1960s.
Tragic tale of child abuse fails to make any sense of the crime.
Emanuel Levy
EmanuelLevy.Com
March 22, 2007
A misfire and the most problematic film at Sundance, this fact-based tale of child abuse is disturbing, appalling, and voyeuristic due to poor conception and execution by writer-director O'Haver who ironically has been wanting to make it for 20 years.
By instead focusing more on the character of Gertrude Baniszewski, the film relegates Sylvia Likens to a cypher with no real identity - she's simply a vessel for abuse.
The real high point of this film is Catherine Keener's captivating performance in the role of the troubled and possessive Gertie, vacillating between disturbingly abusive and imploringly sympathetic the way only a truly manipulative psychopath really can.
Gut wrenching performances, a well structured narrative, and a great cast makes "An American Crime" one of the finer movies to depict one of the most gruesome travesties of the twentieth century...
(Catherine) Keener, always a versatile actress, takes on the challenge of portraying perhaps one of the most unlikable villains in the history of true crime, and tries to find the humanity buried somewhere within her.
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