Death in Love (2008)

Don't let the first few seconds scare you away. After that, the remaining initial nine minutes of dialog in this movie grabbed my attention. As a 49 year old guy, it was like the conversation that I've been holding in my own head was exposed, thoughts that I've never admitted to another human because of my shame, somehow brought out into the public for everyone to hear. Unbelievably honest, real, certainly a glimpse into my very brain with the same rationale and conclusions that I have come to in my own life.If you've lived enough of live, you recognize the maternal instinct of the mother for her disadvantaged son. She protects him, puts up with him and shows a patience that only a guilt laden (whether deservedly so or not) mother will demonstrate. Her description of the call of her jilted boyfriend's parent's call is also not out of the ordinary for some of us. The acting of the disabled son, the emotion, absolutely fantastic and realistic. Unbelievably realistic, like looking into someone's personal life.The movie only gets better. Watch it if you're interested in exploring the shadows of the human condition in an honest, thought provoking manner. Bravo!

This movie tells a story held secret by most people who write about the Holocaust, which is the crippling effect of the Survivors' war experiences on their children. Studies have shown that the children of Nazi Holocaust Survivors share many if not all of their parents' psychological issues, particularly depression and post-traumatic stress. This film has the rare courage and honesty to show the bleak emotional damage left by that war, not only on its direct victims but on their children as well. The portrait of the mother is particularly bitterly real -- her seemingly inexplicably outbursts and fits of violence a near-mirror of the unexplained violence she witnessed as a girl; her narcissism and coldness linked to her own abandonment as a girl. Again, a poignant and tragic reality of the psychological landscape of all survivors of war. The actors were superb, the dialogue actually worth LISTENING to. Haas and Lucas put in beautifully nuanced performances and Bisset was outstanding in arguably the best, most emotional performance of her career, and looking more beautiful than ever.This is not an easy film. It is most definitely not a family film (there are explicit depictions of sex). It is a disturbing portrait of broken people struggling to find reasons to stay alive. It's pretty great, really.

What happens when the writer of some gems as "The Punisher", "Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights" who also directed crap like "Uptown Girls" decides to write and direct an artsy flick?Death In Love is the answer. This film does not pull any punch when it comes to gruesome and explicit scenes. Writer/director Boaz Yakin had to finance this film all by himself because he had specific things in mind. This would never have been approved by studios and I understand why he got no financial backing. Having a specific vision, refusing to compromise are all laudable as far as I am concerned. It's just that, unfortunately, Yakin's vision seems terribly limited. So are his skills as a storyteller. The founding story arc revolves around a Jewish girl who begins an affair with a doctor overseeing experiments on human in a concentration camp during WWII. Yakin goes all guns blazing trying to showcase the intensity of this relationship and fails spectacularly because there is a total lack of chemistry between the actors and the script is emotionally numb right from the start. She just supposedly falls in love at first sight, with a psycho doctor who looks like an extra in an infomercial. The second story arc (which gets the most screen time) takes place in the present and features this woman again with her husband and two adult sons. All of which seem to be mysteriously as nuts as she is for no reason whatsoever. In between, we get flashbacks from the time her sons were children and how she'd go nuts and scare them, but it's done awkwardly, like what you'd expect in a direct to video "it happened for real" melodrama featuring Melissa Gilbert or some other has-been. The present-day story arc features the most interesting and intriguing scenes. The youngest son (Lukas Haas) is a total waste of screen time as an obnoxious man-child who has various phobias and still live with his parent. But the eldest son (Josh Lucas) gets a lot of screen time. He's almost 40 years old, seemingly jaded about everything. Of lot of his scenes (particularly with his co-worker played by Adam Brody) feature dialogue that, while not amazing, is still better than what the rest of the movie has to offer. There are a few themes displayed but Yakin, in the least subtle way EVER implies a strong connection between pain and sexuality. In fact, so strong that he almost implies one is synonymous with the other. This could be a powerful and interesting theme to explore in a few characters but here, it's just not done well. Every character on screen has intense desire to masturbate, and it seems nobody is able to make love without beating his partner at the same time. It's just... amateurish. The story and characters feel artificial despite all the courageous grit Yakin put in the film. There is also a strong undercurrent of self-loathing in all the main characters. Yakin is Jewish himself and I sensed that he was extremely critical of a segment of people who shun their origins and hate what they are. And I can appreciate his attempt to highlight that. One of the most powerful scene, to me, was a small one where the Jewish girl at the concentration camp (who receives favorable treatment from the doctor, her lover) refuses to give the rest of her meal to a starving Jewish violinist. Instead, she sadistically eats every last crumb, as if she renounced her Jewish heritage and what she really is.All in all, I think Yakin tackled powerful issues in a very confusing way. This feels like a very personal film but unfortunately, the few powerful scenes in there, the great performances by Lucas, Bisset and Haas and the grittiness can't save a weak script and a weak story.

This is like some crazed version of the Salinger family of cognoscenti in Franny and Zooey; all members destroyed and genius blighted by the neurotic legacy of the mother's will to survive the KZ experience in 1945. Bisset plays the mother who suffered the Sophie's Choice of seducing her executioner-doctor with sado-masochistic sexual rompings in order to survive and make a family in New york with two sons both of whom are dripping with potential but who have had their genius crushed by her wild and uncontained rages. The provider father is a shadow of a man who cannot control his wife's mental devolution nor his sons' actual contempt for him.With stilted monologues and dialogues their raisons d'etre paint them as hollow people pretending to cope with a meaningless set of unhappy lives.The one shocking curiosity is that the end of the film houses a prolonged scream of orgasmic satisfaction which stems from the aged mother now visited again by her Camp doctor as she is finally set free of her morbid longings with a wholehearted indulgence in what she has missed all these years. Out of a Mephistophelian debacle comes a renaissance of the evil promise; all the evil caused by her moral turpitude is 'excused' with this one long drawn-out scream of sexual satisfaction. Worth a watch if only for the daring moral tightrope walking ...