Lolita changes teams in truthful 'L.I.E.'

BY FANG CHEN

The film follows the life of Howie Blitzer (Paul Franklin Dano), a 15-year-old who has recently lost his mother to a tragic automobile accident, as he learns to embrace life on his own terms.

But be advised: this is not your typical boy-meets-world story, and it certainly is not your typical NC-17 hodgepodge of disturbing sex and violence. As L.I.E. snakes its way through the savage suburban jungle that is Long Island, a once-inexperienced Howie learns to mold his own definitions of sexuality, family, and the meaning of being a man.

Howie's life seems to fit all of the qualifications of suburbia: a comfortable upper middle-class home, a few boys that he hangs out with regularly in the parking lot of the neighborhood diner, and a broken family. Estranged from his father, who works all day and spends more time with the new girlfriend at night than with his own son, Howie lives in a house that is nothing but a shell to him. That may be why he and his friends regularly vandalize the other houses in the neighborhood—not necessarily because 15-year-old boys need jewelry or fur coats, but because in doing so they are looking for something their own homes cannot provide: friendship and acceptance.

During one of these excursions, Howie's best friend Gary, your basic type-B delinquent teenager, played by a pierced and tattooed Billy Kay, takes him to the house of Big John Harrigan (masterfully acted by the versatile Brian Cox), a well-known and respected member of the community. The boys manage to escape from Big John's basement with a set of prized guns, but not before Big John rips off Howie's jeans pocket in his attempt to stop them. As Big John drives around the neighborhood looking for the young thieves, the audience realizes that this has ceased to be just another movie about teen angst; it promises from this point on to be something far more unusual.

It's not long before the ex-Marine tracks down Howie and demands payment for his guns. When Howie promises to repay the debt in whatever way he can, Big John introduces him to the darker side of suburbia, one crawling with creepy old men and the young boys who love them. Big John informs Howie that his friend Gary is one of the many boys who wait by the side of the L.I.E. to be picked up by men willing to pay for sex, and that if he wishes, he can easily do the same. But the most fascinating twist of the entire movie lies in Howie's response to being thrust into this unfamiliar world. Here the subtle brilliance of the movie truly becomes manifest.

Big John—or as the tongue-in-cheek license plate gracing his fire-engine red hotrod reads, "BJ"—seems in daylight to be a study in unequivocal masculinity. But lurking in the shadows is a secret, darker life: he collects young boys. Cox brings realistic humanity to his character, a Dr. Moreau of Long Island, offering love and support to a group of boys while indulging his pedophilia in return.

However, Big John soon discovers that Howie is not your typical searching teenager, and his own character soon morphs into something more than that of your typical dirty old man. Howie's intelligence seduces BJ, and what ordinarily would be a grotesque and immoral situation takes a Nabokovian turn.

The film, astoundingly, becomes a sort of modern-day love story, touching despite its controversial circumstances. While the audience may initially be taken aback by the NC-17 rating, L.I.E. defies all norms and expectations. The director's inventive use of homoerotic imagery—spurting water guns, pop-up lawn sprinklers, and suggestive scenes with gun barrels—ensures that eroticism between men remains in the foreground of the film at all times.

But more astute viewers will sense the director's deeper intentions. In the neighborhoods most of us recognize, old stereotypes may not apply to growing up, and the seeming innocence of the boy next door might only be skin-deep.

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