Loverboy

The film opens with Emily driving, singing to her six-year-old son while guiding his hands on the steering wheel. She is packing a small suitcase, and the dialogue hints they are about to leave for a journey to an amazing land. The alternating cuts between the car and the suitcase foreshadow a radical departure from ordinary life.

Eight and a half years earlier, Emily narrates how she tried to conceive Paul. After repeated unsuccessful artificial inseminations, she engages in numerous sexual encounters across the country, convinced that multiplying partners would prevent a single father. She believes her sole purpose is to bring life into the world, no matter the cost.

After about ten weeks of pregnancy, she bleeds at an airport, losing the child and her hope of ever having a baby. Shattered, she spirals into depression and retreats to a hotel during a business seminar. This event marks a turning point that will redefine her path to motherhood.

In the hotel during a business seminar, Emily meets a man named Paul. They immediately connect and have a passionate night which results in Emily's second pregnancy. This encounter sets the stage for the son she will raise as her own.

Emily buys a house and gives birth to a boy, whom she names Paul, after his father. She devotes herself to his upbringing, reading to him and searching for buried treasure. The pair share affectionate nicknames—Loverboy and Miss Darling—that underscore their close bond.

As Paul grows older, he notices other children going to school and asks why he is not. She tries to keep him away from other children as a means to protect him, but he becomes increasingly determined to go out and play. Her fear is that the outside world will diminish his extraordinary potential.

When she finally relents and lets him go to school, Emily begins to experience separation anxiety herself. She repeatedly tries to pull him back from school to keep him close, while Paul pushes for independence. This push-pull defines their fragile balance between love and overprotection.

The tension between protection and independence escalates as Paul runs away to attend school. The staff attempt to calm Emily, but she insists her child is exceptional and that ordinary schooling would diminish his potential. The conflict reveals the depth of her devotion and fear.

In the opening car scene, Paul loses his first tooth and Emily makes him sleep in the car. She then takes a bottle of pills and falls asleep with the car engine running, a ritual that foreshadows the tragedy to come. The moment blends memory with present tension, underscoring Emily's obsessive devotion.

In the morning, the lawnmower boy discovers the scene and finds Paul alive. Emily, however, has died in the attempt, leaving her son to inherit a world shaped by her obsessive love. The moment marks the end of one life and the convoluted beginning of another.

With Emily gone, Paul grows up carrying the memory of his mother and their shared rituals. The narrative uses flashbacks to reveal how those moments still shape his choices and sense of belonging. His childhood memories become the lens through which he views both loss and love.

The film ends with Paul as an older man standing in a field with his girlfriend, whispering into the ears of a flock of sheep. The quiet ritual mirrors the mother-son bond and echoes the dream of the amazing land. The closing image circles back to the opening motif of escape and wonder.