Humbert reflects on the tenderness of life, and the soft, forbidden sweetness of a young boy’s cheek

Were there other films before this? There were; of course there were. I was late in arriving to the theatre (traffic, lightning), and not in the most generous of spirits when the house lights gave way to my naïve anticipation. For none could have predicted that I, in that disgruntled, dripping instant, was standing on the precipice of a boundless electric intensity; that I was moments away from understanding, truly, what it meant to yearn, to bleed, for the phosphorescent flocon de neige of a young boy’s glance.

Mason—the pétrin of the film’s boyhood—enchants with his luminous grey eyes and sweet succulent summer strawberry lips. I knew the instant I saw him, as I know now, as I always have known and always will know—that within this collection of digitized stills that pass before my eyes with a rapidity that gives the illusion of movement—lay the key to my soul.

Even as I fell down, down, down into the incomparable pit of amorous longing, I knew that the boy I cherished would soon transition to something altogether vile and pubescent. This boy was my destiny, but I tossed and turned with the agonizing pince à épiler that his destiny was to cease being a nymphet, to abandon that very quality of boyhooded-ness that I so treasured.

The film is not a tale about boyhood, as its title suggests, but a perverse monument to its erosion. It exalts the harrowing transition from wide-eyed cherub to scraggly, lanky, knobby, patchy-bearded, stupid ugly stupid butthole, with the slow deliberateness of Chinese water torture.

And yet etched—Nay! Branded!—into my heart is the porcelain symmetry of your flawless child face. What I would do, mon menuiserie, to rewind you, pause you, burn every scrap of the final two hours of this villainous film. Oh, that Mason were himself a piece of Masonry, unaffected by the passage of time, unsullied by puberty and all that it implies.

Oh! That I could kiss you backwards, that I could rip each hair out of your 12-years ruined chin and dress you, smooth cheeked and glowing, in footie pajamas. I would snap your spider-like, sinewy limbs until they reached the proportions you once possessed, fill your lungs with helium, until your voice ascended to the octave of the seraphs! I would put you in a stroller, my love, and feed you a diet of only milk and applesauce.

If I could summon the will of the angels and change you back I would burst with joy, towering echelons above the crumpled wretch I’ve become , weeping, cursing God for creating my own personal Eden, my heaven, ma pomme de pin, and then unraveling it, corroding it, pimple by pimple, hair by hair, while I, a helpless spectre, can do nothing but watch.

“Boyhood” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian).