For the record, the last thing a beautiful naked woman(Morena Baccarin) wants to deal with is a man(Josh Lucas) in the middle of a midlife crisis, causing her to get dressed and leave, leading him to masturbate himself to sleep. He's not the only one not getting any, as his younger brother(Lukas Haas), a talented but
emotionally disturbed pianist with weird eating habits, suffers under the thumb of their controlling mother(Jacqueline Bisset), a Holocaust survivor. So much so, that the older brother cedes control of his apartment to him, forcing him back into the workplace of a semi-legit talent agency where he meets the new gun(Adam Brody).
As "The Night Porter" proved decades ago, trying to combine sex and the Holocaust can only move a film into exploitation territory no matter how artsy you think you are. And that's especially the case with "Death in Love" that also has predictability and ponderousness amongst its sins. On the plus side, it valiantly tries to explore the connection between the body and the soul with some memorable images like the opening montage of sex and dissection and rabbis preparing bodies for burial. The older son wonders if his mother has a soul(he puts it much more crudely), considering how cold hearted she seems. That attitude actually allowed her to survive the Holocaust intact, but in the movie's eyes, it also somehow makes her complicit in its crimes.
December 2, 2010
Top Critic
