‘Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette’ review: Our love story with female martyrs

Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette is a sleek depiction of an iconic ’90s couple that seemed emblematic of all society holds dear. John (Paul Anthony Kelly) was handsome, athletic, and the heir apparent to a family deified in popular culture. Carolyn (Sarah Pidgeon) was beautiful, stylish, and possessed an ineffable quality that all It Girls do. It is this quality that the series aims to explore in its best episodes, which happen to be those depicting Carolyn’s life before she married into the Kennedy family and became a martyr for her proximity to a famous man.

Love Story is fascinated by the female martyr, a reflection of a cultural fascination that is referenced but never fully explored. The women, both in focus and on the periphery of the series, are grappling with lives that feel eclipsed by the men that they love. This leaves the series feeling less like a love story and more like a cautionary tale about the loss of selfhood by women in the orbit of men whose legacies precede everything else.

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (Naomi Watts) is a foreboding presence until her death in the third episode entitled “America’s Widow.” She resigns herself to life as a public figure and the ownership the public feels over her pain, desiring for her son John to find a woman capable of the self-sacrifice required to live in service to a man’s legacy. Her disapproval of his girlfriend Daryl Hannah (Dree Hemingway) stems from Hannah’s possession of her own legacy as a Hollywood actress, with the unspoken rule being that John’s other half can never overshadow him.

Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette plays out as a cautionary tale.

Her own self-sacrifice, best exemplified by the mention of her famous refusal to remove the pink suit soaked with President John F. Kennedy’s blood after his assassination, culminates in a scene in which she receives the last rites on her deathbed. A choir, intercut with shots of the inside of a cathedral, underscores the death of the First Lady. It’s an aesthetic anointment of sainthood to a woman characterized solely by her commitment to her family. In contrast, the scenes of Carolyn’s life before becoming a Kennedy begin to feel like a eulogy to her personhood.

Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette is worth watching for Pidgeon’s portrayal of Carolyn Bessette. Her performance anchors a series frequently weighed down by excessive sentimentality and clumsy writing. Carolyn has been diluted down to her sartorial choices in popular culture. Her name is synonymous with ’90s minimalism and seemingly effortless elegance. While the series highlights her immaculate taste to great effect, Pidgeon imbues her with the humanity often lost when discussing her. Carolyn’s style is an extension of her self-possession and sharp wit, a wardrobe curated by a woman who commands a room with ease.

When her relationship with John begins in earnest, subtle changes in her appearance signal her confinement to the impossible standards set by the public. Her hair is straighter and more blonde. Gone are the slip dresses and red nail polish. When she leaves the house, her hair no longer falls freely, instead pulling it back into a tight bun. She aims her downward and away from the cameras that follow her incessantly. Her stylish minimalism now reflects a desire for invisibility rather than reflecting the ease with which she embodies sophistication.

Beautiful blondes martyred by fame.

Marilyn Monroe and Princess Diana both haunt Love Story. Marilyn through references to her alleged affair with the President and Diana through the television coverage of her death in 1997. The reasoning behind their inclusion is obvious: both women occupy a perennial space in the public consciousness as beautiful blondes martyred by fame, at once overexposed and unknowable.

Each mention of them acts as a reminder that Carolyn will occupy the same space in the cultural zeitgeist, her personhood erased in favor of the romanticization of what she represents. In the penultimate episode, “Exit Strategy,” Carolyn’s fixation on the news coverage of Diana’s death is especially chilling, considering the fact that Carolyn’s own tragic fate would receive similar coverage a mere two years later.

John and Carolyn’s families are best represented by John’s sister Caroline (Grace Gummer), Carolyn’s mother Ann Marie (Constance Zimmer), and Carolyn’s sister Lauren (Sydney Lemmon). Caroline, whose presence in the story could easily be diluted down to pure antagonism, is instead seen as a woman reckoning with a public life defined by loss.

An unexpected twist on the love story premise.

Gummer gives a measured performance that conveys both crushing grief and strength built over years of enduring public scrutiny. Ann Marie, portrayed as a powerful matriarch in her own right, serves as a foil to the Kennedys in her pursuit of protecting her daughters, in life and in death.

Zimmer balances a mother’s anguish at the loss of her children with simmering rage that boils over in one of the best scenes in the series. Lemmon’s portrayal of Lauren, who also perished in the plane crash that killed Carolyn and John, adds color to the woman often forgotten when discussing this saga.

Like her mother, she approaches Carolyn’s relationship with John with healthy skepticism and concern for Carolyn’s descent into self-sacrifice. These women, all tinged with tragedy in their own ways, round out the thematic exploration of martyrdom that Love Story enamors itself with.

The bottom line.

For all of its flaws, the series does capture a love story…though perhaps not the one its title promises. It captures the love story of tragic women and the public consciousness, the endless fascination society has with female pain. A 1996 issue of New York Magazine featuring Carolyn Bessette on the cover was emblazoned with “Meet the Mrs.” and asks the question that has defined her legacy in so many ways: “What does John Kennedy Jr. see in Carolyn Bessette?” Love Story answers that question by placing Carolyn at the forefront, cementing her legacy as a woman who could never quite be eclipsed, even by the most famous family in American history.

Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette is available to stream on Hulu. Watch the trailer below.

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Featured image courtesy of FX/Hulu.