Loverboy
I had not even heard of Loverboy until I saw a trailer for it on the Sherrybaby DVD. The film has several major American actors, but did not get any marketing campaign. I picked up the DVD and it is totally an oddball film but very good.
The first weird thing about it is that two of the stars, Kyra Sedgwick and Kevin Bacon, are married in real life, but in the film he plays her father. Some people might have a hard time getting past that, so it might be better to go into the film not knowing that the actors are married in real life.
That aspect really isn’t so bad, because they have no scenes together. Sedgwick plays Emily as an adult; her father appears only in flashbacks from when Emily was a young girl (played, of course, by someone else). Also, I realized afterward that the girl playing Emily is, in real life, the daughter of Kyra Sedgwick and Kevin Bacon. So it seems completely reasonable that in the movie she would play Kevin Bacon’s character’s daughter, and also that she would play Kyra Sedgwick’s character as a young girl, but the strange corollary of that is that Kevin Bacon is playing his wife’s father.
Incidentally, Kevin Bacon wears the exact same costumes, and has the same hairstyle, as he did in the 1970s scenes of Where the Truth Lies, if I am not mistaken.
Even apart from the casting, the spectre of incest is not far beneath the surface of the film, because Kyra Sedgwick’s character has a quite unhealthy obsession with her six-year-old son. Part of the plot is vaguely reminiscent of John Irving’s great novel The World According to Garp although ultimately Emily, as played by Sedgwick, is weaker and more disturbed than Irving’s Jenny Fields.
Sandra Bullock is luminous as a neighbourhood mother who becomes a role model for the young Emily.
The film also has notable cameos by Campbell Scott, Oliver Platt, Matt Dillon, Melissa Errico, Carolyn McCormick, and Blair Brown.
The two child actors are excellent: Dominic Scott Kay as Paul and Sosie Bacon as Emily.
You can watch the trailer at ifilm.com; it also has interviews with Kyra Sedgwick and Kevin Bacon (who directed the film as well as acting in it), but the interviews give away major spoilers about how the film ends.
The first weird thing about it is that two of the stars, Kyra Sedgwick and Kevin Bacon, are married in real life, but in the film he plays her father. Some people might have a hard time getting past that, so it might be better to go into the film not knowing that the actors are married in real life.
That aspect really isn’t so bad, because they have no scenes together. Sedgwick plays Emily as an adult; her father appears only in flashbacks from when Emily was a young girl (played, of course, by someone else). Also, I realized afterward that the girl playing Emily is, in real life, the daughter of Kyra Sedgwick and Kevin Bacon. So it seems completely reasonable that in the movie she would play Kevin Bacon’s character’s daughter, and also that she would play Kyra Sedgwick’s character as a young girl, but the strange corollary of that is that Kevin Bacon is playing his wife’s father.
Incidentally, Kevin Bacon wears the exact same costumes, and has the same hairstyle, as he did in the 1970s scenes of Where the Truth Lies, if I am not mistaken.
Even apart from the casting, the spectre of incest is not far beneath the surface of the film, because Kyra Sedgwick’s character has a quite unhealthy obsession with her six-year-old son. Part of the plot is vaguely reminiscent of John Irving’s great novel The World According to Garp although ultimately Emily, as played by Sedgwick, is weaker and more disturbed than Irving’s Jenny Fields.
Sandra Bullock is luminous as a neighbourhood mother who becomes a role model for the young Emily.
The film also has notable cameos by Campbell Scott, Oliver Platt, Matt Dillon, Melissa Errico, Carolyn McCormick, and Blair Brown.
The two child actors are excellent: Dominic Scott Kay as Paul and Sosie Bacon as Emily.
You can watch the trailer at ifilm.com; it also has interviews with Kyra Sedgwick and Kevin Bacon (who directed the film as well as acting in it), but the interviews give away major spoilers about how the film ends.