so i had settled the family in to watch what i remembered to be a delightful little film, a lovely holiday romp known as "fanny and alexander." we had made pizza, and had nestled in the couch with our plates and our drinks, breathlessly awaiting our entertainment.

the first thing boy notices is that the movie is rated "r." i certainly didn't remember that. i had seen the film once before when i was in college. its a bergman film, and i don't remember it even being rated. the next thing he notices is that it is over three hours long. don't recall that either. admittedly, i was pretty wasted at the time, and i don't remember much of the film's specifics, except that it was a laugh riot. i couldn't remember any nudity or violence that would preclude the boy from seeing it, so i waved off my dear ephelba's concerns and we're off to the movies.

the film starts out with a lavish depiction of a wealthy extended family's christmas celebration. there are a couple dark moments: an alcoholic uncle who is verbally abusive to his wife. but he is really cool with the kids. he takes them out to an unused hallway and blows out a lit candleabra with a gigantic fart. really. boy loved that part. but then, there is the sex. and the discussions of whose husband is oversexed or not. apparently in sweden, they have sex all the time with most of their clothes on. so i was right about the nudity- hardly any- but lots of sex! boy closed his eyes and ehpelba fast forwarded.

then there was the death. one of the main characters, alexander, his father dies. he doesn't take it well. he is really angry, so as he is walking along in the funeral precession, he is swearing (under his breath) every swear word he knows. its in swedish, but every one is put up on the screen in subtitles. most of them are, unfortunately, words that boy has already heard. but little alexander knows a lot of words, and pretty soon he utters that one word that will make most women cringe, a word boy doesn't know yet; the unutterable.

my dear ephelba has just about had it, and throws a fit as far as she can, which isn't that far because she is like eight months pregnant. but its respectable for all of the effort that went into it. what word can it be that boy doesn't know yet? it was a list of mostly short words, no compound swears. so ephelba asks, which word didn't you know, boy? "c*nt" chirps the boy, bright as ever. how can boy not know that word i wonder aloud. because we never say it, ephelba replies. surely at school, i say. no, says ephelba, and she didn't hear that word until high school. well, you were raised by christian freaks (ephelba's mom is actually a missionary, in the ukraine. really. and her dad is not far short of that.) that seemed to be a closer.

so there was a l-o-n-g discussion about how that is the rudest word ever to refer to a woman's vagina and that boy should never, ever use that word in any kind of polite company. then it time for boy to brush his teeth and go to bed. which he did. my dear ephelba and i watched the rest of the film. it crashed and burned around us, the desparate relationships, the freaky magical realism. ehpelba hated it. boy will not be seeing the rest of it, at least until he is eighteen. i kind of liked it.