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L.I.E. stands for the Long Island Expressway and is also the title of Michael Cuesta's 2001 award-winning independent film about one boy's turbulent journey to adulthood. While the particulars of this adolescent's life are unusually difficult, the film evokes something typical about coming of age for boys in an affluent American suburb. The film also conveys a sense of the peril that can befall any adolescent. This is evoked in the film by a feeling of danger that grows in intensity and moves from background to foreground as it underpins the story line. The film-maker makes some important observations about identity, sexuality, and mourning in the context of adolescent development using the film's gripping emotional narrative.
L.I.E. is a story about loss and its aftermath as well as a developmental journey. The main character is a 15 year-old adolescent named Howie Blitzer (played by Paul Dano) whose life has been tragically altered because his mother has died suddenly in a car crash. Losing a parent in childhood or adolescence is an event of such magnitude that it often overwhelms the capacity to cope. This is because the adolescent, not yet psychologically separate, is still deeply dependent on the parent for a sense of well-being, for the buffering of inner tensions and affect states, and for the support of mental structures not yet fully developed (Samuels, 1988).
Children who lose a parent in childhood or adolescence must participate in two internal tasks at once. They must move forward developmentally and reinvest in life; simultaneously, they must find some way to maintain their sustaining, affective attachment to the lost parent. These tasks often pull in opposing directions. Kris (2012) astutely frames the response to loss1 as a “conflict between the wish to maintain continuity as though no loss has taken place and the wish to live within present reality.” He views mourning as a resolution of this divergent conflict.2 Yet, mourning for children or adolescent