Death in Love

Director: Boaz Yakin

Writer: Boaz Yakin

Cast: Emma Bell, Jacqueline Bisset, Jean Brassard

Distributor: Screen Media Films

Country: US

Theatrical Release Date: July 17, 2009

Synopsis: What burdens do the survivors of those who survived carry? A young woman in a Nazi concentration camp saves her life by seducing the young doctor who performs medical experiments on prisoners. Cut to decades later, when that same woman (played by Jacqueline Bisset) is living in New York City and married with two grown sons. The two siblings have developed differently under a mother with a long history of erratic behavior. The younger one can't cope at all, and the older one copes too well. Portrayed by Josh Lucas, he is now 40 years old and hides out in psychosexual escapades and a job at a fraudulent modeling agency scamming the young and hopeful. He is good at them both--too good. So why is he growing increasingly frightened? Is he losing his game? His sexual prowess and intellectual diatribes no longer make him feel better. He will have to change to survive. [Synopsis courtesy of Sundance Film Festival]

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Round-Up: In New York Magazine, David Edelstein has a few words of advice for moviegoers: "If you manage not to bolt in the first five minutes of Death in Love—wherein Boaz Yakin cuts back and forth between a Jewish girl having sex with a Nazi and graphic shots of Nazis performing experimental surgery on Jews—you’ll be rewarded with a pretentious and stilted but weirdly compelling blend of sins-of-the-parent saga and horror movie." During his coverage of Sundance 2008, Robert Koehler predicts the success of the film with little enthusiasm: "So distant from Yakin's fine breakthrough, 'Fresh,' that it seems to be from a different solar system, family drama involving the psychological legacy of the Holocaust is stymied by arch, stagy dialogue, bizarre characterizations and ultra-chilly filmmaking. Beyond harshly received Sundance preem, prospects are flatline all the way." Rex Reed at the New York Observer answers his own rhetorical question: "What makes pretentious, low-budget-indie filmmakers think the world is waiting breathlessly to absorb their personal memoirs like groundbreaking new recipes for meatballs?...Mr. Yakin’s Orthodox roots have apparently inspired nothing but misery." Screen's David D'Arcy commends the film, "Boaz Yakin's dark drama is about the legacy of pain. We enter it through a smooth-talking scammer in Manhattan whose mother survived the Nazi camps thanks to a love affair with a doctor who experimented on prisoners. Death In Love shows that, as parents made moral compromises, so do the sons, long after the tragedy which marked their lives."

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