BEAU TEM MEDO (BEAU IS AFRAID, USA, 2023) - This movie spends its entire time inside the mind of a man who clearly suffers from extreme anxiety, but it's hard to pin down what exactly it is that he's afraid of. And unlike movies like David Cronenberg's Naked Lunch, we're offered no obvious reason why Beau is seeing some of the weird things he sees. Is he schizophrenic? Maybe. Ari Aster does not want to answer that question, he wants you to ponder on multiple possibilities. And like most art that leans on the abstract side of the spectrum, each viewer is likely to reflect differently on it, and come up with their own answers (if any at all). From what I could tell, there were many clues in the movie that seem to imply that his anxiety disorder is caused by something sexual. A sexual trauma, perhaps. From graphic graffiti at in the earlier sequences, scenes where he is attracted to a girl his age but believes he will die if he has sex with her, and a creature his mother calls "his father" locked in an attic that is basically a monster made out of male genitalia, the movie is riddled with disturbing sexual references. (Not unlike something Cronenberg would do.)
