CHAPPAQUIDDICK

PG-13, 101 minutes. Through today only at Lisbon. Still playing at Niantic, Mystic Luxury Cinemas, Stonington, Westbrook. Ambiguous and damning at once, John Curran’s “Chappaquiddick” plunges us back into the summer of 1969: Edward M. (“Teddy”) Kennedy, already seven years a senator having filled his brother’s Massachusetts seat, was Joseph Kennedy’s only living son left and a likely future president. Those aspirations — and some of the Kennedy dynasty’s noble veneer — effectively crashed when 37-year-old Teddy (played by Jason Clarke) drove an Oldsmobile off a narrow bridge on a remote beach road on Chappaquiddick Island, off Martha’s Vineyard, late at night on July 18. With him was 28-year-old Mary Jo Kopechne, a former campaign worker for Bobby (played by Kate Mara in the film), who died underwater. Kennedy escaped from the car, submerged in eight feet of water. Whatever his efforts were to free Kopechne, they were futile. It took him 10 hours to report the incident to the police. Kennedy attributed the delay to a concussion and exhaustion. Chappaquiddick has long loomed in the political imagination as a kind of definitive yet murky scandal. Curran’s film — a profile in cowardice, you might call it — is principally an effort to visualize and understand that evening. It’s a low-key, generally absorbing if somewhat lackluster procedural that ominously reflects on the darker shadows that loom behind even the brightest shining political hopes. But “Chappaquiddick,” penned straightforwardly by Taylor Allen and Andrew Logan, casts an equally critical eye on him as he launches into full damage control mode. — Jake Coyle, Associated Press