Did Beau never think to consult a doctor at any time? Or is he really such a dimwit as to have taken his mother’s word for it, for nearly half a century? The film doesn’t make it clear if Beau ever masturbated as a teen-ager, or ever had a wet dream and wondered why he didn’t drop dead in his sleep. As a result, the middle-aged Beau, born in 1975, has never had sex. The cause was a congenital (!) heart murmur, one with which Beau, too, is afflicted. He was raised by his mother in the shadow of a horror story: his father died while having sex with her for the first time, on their wedding night, when Beau was conceived.
Beau Isaac Wassermann (played by Joaquin Phoenix) is afraid of sex, and for good reason. “Beau Is Afraid,” written and directed by Ari Aster, is none of those things it’s a complaint without a complainer, because its protagonist, unlike Roth’s, has almost no voice or discernible inner life, and because its maker, unlike Roth, hides behind narrative trickery. The premise is a classic-it’s the basis for Philip Roth’s “ Portnoy’s Complaint,” for one, which is personal, detailed, stylish, historically informed, culturally insightful, and uproariously funny.
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