Film: Good Luck to You, Leo Grande / The Lost Children

Good Luck to You, Leo Grande (Hulu)

It’s been a while since I’ve watched an “adult” film — by which I mean a film clearly made with an adult sensibility, to be seen by adults. It’s a shame that “adult film” has become a euphemism for porn, in that porn is essentially childish in its infantile insistence on cartoonishly simple plot, inexistent character development, and obligatory smash-boom conclusions. Roadrunner outwits Wile E. Coyote yet again. Cue the cumshot.

Being “adult” requires appreciation of nuance, depth, and the ability to recognize how seemingly contradictory layers of experience can lasagna into something unexpectedly wonderful. Adulthood is less a function of age than of agape, the highest form of love — which must include love of the unknowable mystery that resides in other people.

“But,” one might ask, “how can we love the unknown? How can we possibly love what we cannot see?”

Ask any adult.

An adult of any age sees the invisible. She looks at a child and sees the old woman that child will become. She looks at an old house and sees the cascade of birth, death, love, loss, and joy that have flowed there. She feels the reluctant joy of loss and the pre-paid grief of love. As the mystic said, “An enlightened life is one of joyful participation in the sorrows of the world.”