Loverboy (DVD, 2006)

Kevin Bacon directs his wife, Kyra Sedgwick, in the lead role in a most outlandish tale about a mother's obsessive-compulsive relationship with her only child. The story was adapted into a screenplay by Hannah Shakespeare from Victoria Redel's novel. The film deals with a mother's emotional incest with her young son. How can it be anything but disturbing?

The way Bacon directed the film was to flash back & forth from Emily's (Sosie Bacon) troubled childhood to her adulthood desire to be a single, child-possessive parent.

When Emily (Sosie Bacon) was a girl, both of her parents were so inseparably in love that their only child wound up severely neglected. After Emily's father became ill, her parents committed suicide together leaving her orphaned. Thus, the intoxicating strategy of flashing back & forth works to suggest the cause of Emily's bizarre mothering style stemmed from the effects of her own parents' total obsession with each other & emotional negligence & suicidal abandonment of their daughter. In this way, "Loverboy" is a psycho-drama as it zooms inside a family's intergenerational dynamics.

In order to conceive a child, Emily becomes deliberately sexually compulsive with so many men no one will ever know who is the father. Her wild technique of conception works until she miscarries.

A stranger named Paul (Campbell Scott) ultimately impregnates Emily & she names her son after him (but calls him "Loverboy"). Raising "Loverboy" to be with her forever is her total reason for living. He's not socialized properly because Emily (Sedgwick) wants him jealously all to herself.

Throughout the show Emily & Paul encounter people who try to intervene in their lives. A neighbor, Mrs. Harker (Sandra Bullock), who becomes younger Emily's (Sosie Bacon) ideal of a mother, befriends the little girl for a while. Harker (Bullock) is gorgeous & seductive in high heels & a satin robe at the school bus stop, for example. Other people who try to intervene in Emily's past & in 6yo Paul's present life appear briefly in cameo roles: Kevin Bacon, Blair Brown, Matt Dillon, Oliver Platt & Marisa Tomei. Even some of Sedgwick & Bacon's own children are part of the cast (Sosie Bacon plays Emily at 10yo; Travis Bacon plays Lenny; Kevin Bacon's brother Michael Bacon composed the original music; Robert Sedgwick, Kyra's younger brother, plays Emily's 3rd grade teacher). "Loverboy" is not only a vehicle for Kevin Bacon to feature his wife as a shinning star, but he makes much of the cast a family affair!

Kyra Sedgwick delivers, as expected, a stellar performance. She has to put on many faces of emotion which seems so natural for her to do. Partly nude, she is ravishing.

Given that the film depicts a mother coming right to the brink of actually becoming physically incestuous with her 6yo son, as well as the blatant sexual encounters during her impregnation scheme & Sedgwick's (bless-ed) nudity (!), the R rating is not by any means a mistake.

I watched "Loverboy," even though the subject matter of maternal emotional & hints of physical sexual incest is instantly repulsive. But the dramatic performances were too entrancing from which to turn away. I couldn't bring myself to rate it excellent because there wasn't enough of a balance in the film to relieve me of feeling repulsed. Sedgwick's multi-faceted character is one she ever so capably embodies.