Kevin Bacon
Loverboy

"Loverboy" is a 2005 comedy directed by the famous actor Kevin Bacon. The result is fair, but the thesis of the film is debatable. It tells the story of a young woman (played by Kyra Sedgwick, Bacon's wife in real life) who is persistently driven by an exclusive desire for motherhood. The woman insists on raising the child that will come without a partner and wishes to proceed with absolute autonomy. She thus seeks a father based solely on appearance or cultural predisposition and tries to mate with many men in a few hours to obtain an excellent sperm mix and produce an exceptional child. She manages to have many encounters and avoids any possible ties, but never achieves the desired outcome. In a chance meeting with a businessman, however, Kyra will achieve the much-desired pregnancy.

Once a mother, she will take care to choose a peaceful city to raise the newborn with the best conditions, but without a father. Simultaneously, director Bacon shows the woman's past, who as a child suffered from parental indifference. It seems that the mechanism in place leads the viewer to justify the behaviors of the adult Kyra. The deficiencies of her childhood push her to become an adult who desires the opposite for her own child, that is, an obsessive and suffocating devotion to the child, almost morbid. The nauseating acts of love of her inseparable parents, which will culminate in an extreme act that the viewer discovers at the end, will lead the adult Kyra to reject a partner or a stable relationship, projecting her entirely onto her unborn child.

The child grows under the extreme attention of the mother and around six years old begins to desire socialization. The mother doesn't want that, but despite herself, the child protests vehemently to get the meager novelty of experiences that do not include her. The mother's suffering is palpable. It is an obsessive and distorted love, a form of love to give because it was never received, an extreme form of love that will lead to extreme thoughts.

The film is not vulgar at all. There are moments of tenderness and reflection, charming musical interludes paying homage to "the alien" (and alienating) David Bowie, a symbol of youthful rebellion in which young Kyra nurtured her desire for redemption (as in the song dedicated to the astonished parents "Is There Life on Mars?"). The characters are not deeply explored. For instance, there is Sandra Bullock, in the role of a mother offering her child small gestures, but for the young Kyra, they had the taste of great privileges. There is a battered Kevin Bacon father in love with his partner Marisa Tomei, splendid and luminous but sidelined in a marginal role. The cinematography is decent, the plot decently fluid, and the storytelling enjoyable. The viewer may remain more or less bitter or involved, especially for the final turns brought about by a common result of extreme behavioral attitudes, concerning love, from the past and the future.