The film starts with a shot of billowing wheat. It comes into focus, and we pan to reveal the red berries of a shrub. These red berries soon envelop our perspective, and we seem to be drowning in them; that is, before we cut to Lover Boy and the proper narrative begins. This is an evocative way to begin, but its value does not end with the bittersweet tone it sets. In just a few seconds, Lover Boy's tragedy is laid out — albeit subtly.
I'm no botanist, but I believe the berry shrub to be Aronia Arbutifolia, or the red chokeberry. It shares the berry clusters, large leaves, and upturned branches; it's even used in landscaping, which might explain it's proximal presence to the UMASS campus.
The way they're filmed, these berries look appetizing; they're bright and bountiful and ripe for the taking. If you were to eat one, though, you would find it to be unpleasantly bitter. Make them into a jam, though, and they'd be delicious, according to Wikipedia. Their red color in Certified Lover Boy suggests a kind of sensuality that compliments our Lover Boy's playboy attitude — note, though, that the berries can also be black. Considering this red color alongside that playboy attitude and also the framing of the berries — that is, the way we're shown a great many, and don't linger on any one for very long — it follows that each berry represents one of Lover Boy's lovers.
What does it mean, then, that these berries are so bitter, despite their allure? Lover Boy's maxims of "Ghost them all," "Don't respond," and "Only 1 date" suggest that he does not let any of these relationships flourish; to use the Aronia Arbutifolia metaphor, he does not make any chokeberry into a jam. Each entanglement, therefore, will be bitter.
Why, then, does Lover Boy continue to consume these berries? Just the same, why do we pick scabs and itch mosquito bites? Lover Boy very well may expect bitterness — in fact, that would explain why he hasn't invested time in making chokeberry jam — but he simply can't resist the red fruit's temptation.
I have heretofore neglected to mention that Aronia Arbutifolia blooms white and pink flowers in addition to red and black berries. While the appeal of chokeberries and chokeberry jam are in gorging on them, that of the flowers is to simply regard. To eat is more sensual than to gaze, owing to the inherent involvement of the former and the distance with the latter. It follows, then, that the flowers of Aronia Arbutifolia would represent platonic relationships, as opposed to the romantic and sexual ones emblemized by berries.
Female 1 — the woman with whom Lover Boy walks in the flashbacks — is seen holding a white and pink bouquet, which reflects the coloration of Aronia Arbutifolia's flowers. She was his friend — not another lover, as Lover Boy's moniker may suggest. Given her presence in only these flashbacks, it is not a stretch to assume that this friendship has ended.
Then there is Female 2 — Lover Boy's date outside of W.E.B. DuBois. Lover Boy furnishes a purple bouquet for her, which resembles the black variation of a chokeberry in its darkness. This relationship is a berry — neither as beautiful as a flower nor as delicious as a jam. Yet, a flower isn't stimulating, and a jam requires investment — out of the three, a berry is easily the most tempting.
This is the extent of the Aronia Arbutifolia's significance; Lover Boy has forsaken friendship and is fearful of intimacy, leaving him only with meaningless flings. There is one more layer, though, that makes his story just a touch more tragic: the wheat.
In contrast to the Aronia Arbutifolia — which we have established represents interpersonal relationships — wheat is a staple crop, grown for sustenance and subsistence; it is the intrapersonal relationship, or one's relationship with oneself. Flowers are pretty and jam is delicious, but wheat is what will keep you alive. In the film's first few seconds, though, we watch as the red berries distract from the wheat, and the wheat never comes back. Even in the closing seconds, as Lover Boy breaks down, we return to the field of chokeberries, but the wheat is nowhere to be seen.
Lover Boy is trapped in a cycle of hunger, short-term satisfaction, and consequence. He has neglected all the meaningful relationships in his life — those to his friends, those to, and that his partners, and that with himself. It was not always this way — he once placed focus on himself, and once had a real friend — but his desire for short-term satisfaction through temptation has narrowed his perspective, and there now exists no way out for him. The tight angles used to film Lover Boy and the chokeberries give us a taste of that perspective, especially as it compares to other people's — like, for example, Female 2, who is always shown comfortably in an open frame. It reminds us that there is value to white space, peripheral vision, and reflection — that the constant stimulation afforded by our age of information is keeping us trapped in our own endless cycles, ignorant of the ways out.
That is why Lover Boy is such a striking piece of filmography; the struggle with temptation is a tale as old as time, but Lover Boy captures how it manifests in the modern world. The character of Lover Boy is far from sympathetic, but we can't help but feel empathy for him. His long-term satisfaction is, like ours, constantly suppressed by the desire for short-term gratification.
If you take one thing away from this article, let it be this: leave time in your day for idle thought, unmarred by music or media. We see idleness as wrong because it doesn't deliver immediate results — the kind that we are so accustomed to. Immediate results are vacuous, though, and ephemeral. They have to be; complexity, like chokeberry jam, takes time.
Welcome that time.