Death in Love
Death in Love is a psychosexual-thriller about a love affair between a Jewish woman and a doctor overseeing human experimentation at a Nazi German concentration camp, and the impact this has on her sons' lives in the 1990s.
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- Cast:
- Josh Lucas , Jacqueline Bisset , Adam Brody , Morena Baccarin , Lukas Haas , Emma Bell , Betty Gilpin
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Reviews
That was an excellent one.
A story that's too fascinating to pass by...
The acting in this movie is really good.
It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.
Although at times I found this movie hard to watch, I think it is an excellent film about the things that human beings don't want to talk openly about,the underbelly of human life that we all experience and identify with in one way or another. This movie portrays these types of things with a good story, a good script and fine acting.The filmmaker should be commended for his conviction to tell a story that was obviously important to him, by investing his own money to make this film. I see why that was required because society in general does it's best to push down out of sight, the very things that need to have the light shown in on. In my opinion film and theater are the best way to do it, and this movie does it authentically.I agree with some of the other reviewers that this film's subject matter is very important for all of us as human beings to understand and not be afraid of, so that we may have compassion for others who may be "acting out" some neurotic compulsion that they have "inherited" or been left with from experiencing trauma, as well as compassion for our self. Human beings "act out", it is just a part of the human condition and being alive.If you like intensity and a view into deep emotional scenarios this film is for you.
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.
I'm not sure what I make of this film. Its certainly its own film in a way that few films ever are. Is it any good? Your guess is as good as mine.The plot of the film concerns a woman who survived the concentration camps by sleeping with one of the Nazi doctors. We also follow her two sons, one who is unnaturally attached to his mother and won't leave home, and the other a man who works at a questionable modeling agency and sleeps with a good number of women. Its a very sexual and dark tale that has everyone on a downward spiral into destruction.I'm disturbed. This is a trip into the dark side of the human psyche. Rarely have I ever seen the eroticism of death so clearly stated. There is a great deal of food for thought here, but I'm not sure it adds up to much. The people here seem to be some form of extreme cases and they border on certifiable which makes taking anything away from their exploits all that more hard to take. The performances are good and I understand why everyone took their roles, but I'm still struggling to work out what they were getting at.Worth a look if you don't mind looking at the darkness and want to see a unique vision. All others stay away
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 ...