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Aster’s Oedipal freakout is clear from the start. Beau is afraid of his mother. Over the course of the film’s three hours, Beau’s mother, time and time again, dictates his anxiety, sometimes directly. Mona is an evil presence, who goes out of her way to make Beau guilty, to hurt him, to deliberately psychologically damage him. We see in flashbacks, where Mona is played by Zoe Lister-Jones and Beau is played by Armen Nahapetian, how unhealthy their relationship is. Mona tells Beau that his father died the instant Beau was conceived. Ever since, Beau has had a crippling fear of sex, thinking that he, too, will die if he ever has an orgasm.
The middle section of “Beau Is Afraid” is a classic nightmare. Thanks to a falling chandelier, Mona has died. Beau is tasked with returning home for the funeral by an angry lawyer played by Richard Kind. If Beau doesn’t arrive in the next 48 hours, he’ll miss the funeral and henceforth be dubbed the worst son ever. He can’t leave town, however, because the horrible, rotting landscape has left him injured and in the care of strangely placid suburbanites played by Amy Ryan and Nathan Lane. No one can give him money for a plane ticket and no one can give him a ride. The suburbanites turn on him, and Beau flees into the woods. With each passing second, the guilt increases.
Beau’s only respite is essentially fantasy. There is a dreamlike sequence in the wood where Beau watches an improvised theater rendition of his own life. Even in fantasy, Beau wishes he was merely a lost old man and a father … but one who never had sex.
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