Death in Love
Encyclopedia
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. The film debuted in 2008. It was written and directed by Boaz Yakin
.
The film received a limited theatrical release in the United States on 17 July 2009. It is scheduled for DVD release in the United States on January 10, 2010.
The two siblings have developed differently under a mother with a long history of erratic behavior. The neurotic younger son (Lukas Haas) can’t cope at all, for he still lives at home with his mother and father and is locked in a compulsive, co-dependent relationship with the mother. The older son (Josh Lucas) copes too well. The eldest son is 40 years old, he hides out from the world in psychosexual escapades with various women, and has a job at a fraudulent modeling agency scamming the young and hopeful. He is good at them both... too good but he grows increasingly frightened as his sexual prowess and intellectual diatribes no longer make him feel better.
. Yakin explained "This movie came out of a meeting with a studio...What they wanted to do and what I wanted to do were so far apart, I didn't feel I could continue. So I wrote this for a low-budget production. I ended up financing it with my life savings. No one else chipped in a cent. It's not the kind of thing I can afford to do often. But for this one time, I got to express what I wanted to in a way I found interesting. I feel I got to explore and try some things."
Yakin also described the role that the Holocaust plays in the film "For me, the Holocaust part and what it represents is specific. I saw it as a symbol for a certain kind of pain and violence that people keep inside and end up passing on from generation to generation. I saw it as more about love and its destructive power. The Holocaust is a metaphor for this recurring cycle of pain."
Jacqueline Bisset
, who plays the mother, says: "Boaz asked me to play the role of the mother in the film as if she were a wild animal, and in other scenes to play her as moonstruck. This combination is one of the things about the film that captivated me."
It was filmed in 25 days in New York City
.
in January 2008. In 2008, it was also screened at the Boston Film Festival
. The film was screened in Israel
on 22 December 2008. This January, the film will be screened at the Atlanta Jewish Film festival
. The film is scheduled for a theatrical release in July 2009 and will be distributed by Screen Media films. The film was released theatrically in New York
and Los Angeles
on 17 July 2009.
Premieres category in 2008. The critical reception has been polarized, with the film holding a 50% "fresh" rating amongst reviews cited by Rotten Tomatoes
.
The film was given a rave review by The Hollywood Reporter
, describing it as a "stirring glimpse of the ongoing emotional ordeal of a Jewish family.."Death in Love" pierces the senses." The acting performances were also praised, "the strong performances draw us in...Bisset is powerful as a mother who has virtually devoured her young. With her Medusa-like tresses aswirl, she is truly ferocious. As the eldest son, Lucas oozes charm, not only to attract but to repel...Haas is aptly haunting as the younger brother." Technical contributions were described as "functional and vital", with Lesley Barber's score highlighted as "richly tempestuous".
The film was favourably reviewed by Screen Daily " the feel of an Ingmar Bergman
family story, although the pain in this Jewish family in New York is more spoken than unspoken, as in one of Woody Allen
's efforts at transplanting Bergman to Manhattan (Interiors, parts of Hannah and Her Sisters
). The austere interiors of Dara Wishingrad's production design are made even colder by cinematographer Frederick Jacobi's camera." They also made comparisons with Portnoy's Complaint
for its sexual nature and with David Mamet
's Glengarry Glen Ross
for its depiction of a confidence game.
The film was praised by Gary Goldstein of the Los Angeles Times
"Yakin and his intrepid cast pull no punches portraying the film's many carnal encounters, filling the movie with a host of startling and powerful images." Goldstein continued to describe the film as "always riveting" and "one endurance test that's worth the effort." The New York Times was less favourable; "“Death in Love” burrows so deeply into the unconscious minds of its depressed New Yorkers that the movie seems to be mumbling to itself in a dream state, driven more by hazy Freudian logic than ordinary cause and effect. The words it murmurs are a litany of endless, futile self-recrimination."
Jerusalem Film Festival
Ibiza International Film Festival
Supporting
Boaz Yakin
Boaz Yakin is an American screenwriter and film director based in New York City. Yakin studied filmmaking at New York City College and New York University.-Life and career:...
.
The film received a limited theatrical release in the United States on 17 July 2009. It is scheduled for DVD release in the United States on January 10, 2010.
Plot
In 1940s Nazi Germany, a young Jewish woman in a Nazi concentration camp saves her own life by seducing the young doctor who performs medical experiments on prisoners. Decades later in the year 1993, that same woman (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 neurotic younger son (Lukas Haas) can’t cope at all, for he still lives at home with his mother and father and is locked in a compulsive, co-dependent relationship with the mother. The older son (Josh Lucas) copes too well. The eldest son is 40 years old, he hides out from the world in psychosexual escapades with various women, and has a job at a fraudulent modeling agency scamming the young and hopeful. He is good at them both... too good but he grows increasingly frightened as his sexual prowess and intellectual diatribes no longer make him feel better.
Filming
The film was self-financed by its director Boaz YakinBoaz Yakin
Boaz Yakin is an American screenwriter and film director based in New York City. Yakin studied filmmaking at New York City College and New York University.-Life and career:...
. Yakin explained "This movie came out of a meeting with a studio...What they wanted to do and what I wanted to do were so far apart, I didn't feel I could continue. So I wrote this for a low-budget production. I ended up financing it with my life savings. No one else chipped in a cent. It's not the kind of thing I can afford to do often. But for this one time, I got to express what I wanted to in a way I found interesting. I feel I got to explore and try some things."
Yakin also described the role that the Holocaust plays in the film "For me, the Holocaust part and what it represents is specific. I saw it as a symbol for a certain kind of pain and violence that people keep inside and end up passing on from generation to generation. I saw it as more about love and its destructive power. The Holocaust is a metaphor for this recurring cycle of pain."
Jacqueline Bisset
Jacqueline Bisset
Jacqueline Bisset is an English actress. She has been nominated for four Golden Globe Awards and an Emmy Award. She is known for her roles in the films Bullitt , Airport , The Deep , Class , and the TV series Nip/Tuck in 2006...
, who plays the mother, says: "Boaz asked me to play the role of the mother in the film as if she were a wild animal, and in other scenes to play her as moonstruck. This combination is one of the things about the film that captivated me."
It was filmed in 25 days in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
.
Release
The film first premiered at the Sundance Film FestivalSundance Film Festival
The Sundance Film Festival is a film festival that takes place annually in Utah, in the United States. It is the largest independent cinema festival in the United States. Held in January in Park City, Salt Lake City, and Ogden, as well as at the Sundance Resort, the festival is a showcase for new...
in January 2008. In 2008, it was also screened at the Boston Film Festival
Boston Film Festival
Boston Film Festival is an annual film festival held in Boston in the U.S. state of Massachusetts. It has been held annually since 1984, usually in early September....
. The film was screened in Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
on 22 December 2008. This January, the film will be screened at the Atlanta Jewish Film festival
Culture of Atlanta, Georgia
Atlanta, while very much in the South, has a culture that is no longer strictly Southern. This is due to the fact that in addition to a large population of migrants from other parts of the U.S., nearly three-quarters of a million foreign-born people make Atlanta their home, accounting for 13...
. The film is scheduled for a theatrical release in July 2009 and will be distributed by Screen Media films. The film was released theatrically in New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
and Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
on 17 July 2009.
Critical response
The film was selected for the Sundance Film FestivalSundance Film Festival
The Sundance Film Festival is a film festival that takes place annually in Utah, in the United States. It is the largest independent cinema festival in the United States. Held in January in Park City, Salt Lake City, and Ogden, as well as at the Sundance Resort, the festival is a showcase for new...
Premieres category in 2008. The critical reception has been polarized, with the film holding a 50% "fresh" rating amongst reviews cited by Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
.
The film was given a rave review by The Hollywood Reporter
The Hollywood Reporter
Formerly a daily trade magazine, The Hollywood Reporter re-launched in late 2010 as a unique hybrid publication serving the entertainment industry and a consumer audience...
, describing it as a "stirring glimpse of the ongoing emotional ordeal of a Jewish family.."Death in Love" pierces the senses." The acting performances were also praised, "the strong performances draw us in...Bisset is powerful as a mother who has virtually devoured her young. With her Medusa-like tresses aswirl, she is truly ferocious. As the eldest son, Lucas oozes charm, not only to attract but to repel...Haas is aptly haunting as the younger brother." Technical contributions were described as "functional and vital", with Lesley Barber's score highlighted as "richly tempestuous".
The film was favourably reviewed by Screen Daily " the feel of an Ingmar Bergman
Ingmar Bergman
Ernst Ingmar Bergman was a Swedish director, writer and producer for film, stage and television. Described by Woody Allen as "probably the greatest film artist, all things considered, since the invention of the motion picture camera", he is recognized as one of the most accomplished and...
family story, although the pain in this Jewish family in New York is more spoken than unspoken, as in one of Woody Allen
Woody Allen
Woody Allen is an American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, jazz musician, author, and playwright. Allen's films draw heavily on literature, sexuality, philosophy, psychology, Jewish identity, and the history of cinema...
's efforts at transplanting Bergman to Manhattan (Interiors, parts of Hannah and Her Sisters
Hannah and Her Sisters
Hannah and Her Sisters is a 1986 American comedy-drama film which tells the intertwined stories of an extended family over two years that begin and end with a family Thanksgiving dinner...
). The austere interiors of Dara Wishingrad's production design are made even colder by cinematographer Frederick Jacobi's camera." They also made comparisons with Portnoy's Complaint
Portnoy's Complaint
Portnoy's Complaint is the American novel that turned its author Philip Roth into a major celebrity, sparking a storm of controversy over its explicit and candid treatment of sexuality, including detailed depictions of masturbation using various props including a piece of liver...
for its sexual nature and with David Mamet
David Mamet
David Alan Mamet is an American playwright, essayist, screenwriter and film director.Best known as a playwright, Mamet won a Pulitzer Prize and received a Tony nomination for Glengarry Glen Ross . He also received a Tony nomination for Speed-the-Plow . As a screenwriter, he received Oscar...
's Glengarry Glen Ross
Glengarry Glen Ross
Glengarry Glen Ross is a 1984 play written by David Mamet. The play shows parts of two days in the lives of four desperate Chicago real estate agents who are prepared to engage in any number of unethical, illegal acts—from lies and flattery to bribery, threats, intimidation and burglary—to sell...
for its depiction of a confidence game.
The film was praised by Gary Goldstein of the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
"Yakin and his intrepid cast pull no punches portraying the film's many carnal encounters, filling the movie with a host of startling and powerful images." Goldstein continued to describe the film as "always riveting" and "one endurance test that's worth the effort." The New York Times was less favourable; "“Death in Love” burrows so deeply into the unconscious minds of its depressed New Yorkers that the movie seems to be mumbling to itself in a dream state, driven more by hazy Freudian logic than ordinary cause and effect. The words it murmurs are a litany of endless, futile self-recrimination."
Awards
Boston Film FestivalBoston Film Festival
Boston Film Festival is an annual film festival held in Boston in the U.S. state of Massachusetts. It has been held annually since 1984, usually in early September....
- Best Actress - Jacqueline Bisset (won)
- Best Director -Boaz Yakin (won)
Jerusalem Film Festival
Jerusalem Film Festival
The Jerusalem Film Festival is an international film festival held annually in Jerusalem, Israel. The festival was the brainchild of Lia van Leer, who inaugurated it on May 17, 1984...
- Lia Van Leer award - (nominated)
Ibiza International Film Festival
- (Falco d'Or) Best Script - Boaz Yakin (won)
- Best Actor - Josh Lucas (won)
- Best Actress - Jacqueline Bisset (won)
Cast
Main- Josh LucasJosh LucasJosh Lucas is an American actor. He has appeared in many films, including Glory Road, A Beautiful Mind, and Poseidon.-Early life:...
as Eldest Son - Jacqueline BissetJacqueline BissetJacqueline Bisset is an English actress. She has been nominated for four Golden Globe Awards and an Emmy Award. She is known for her roles in the films Bullitt , Airport , The Deep , Class , and the TV series Nip/Tuck in 2006...
as the Mother - Lukas HaasLukas HaasLukas Daniel Haas is an American actor, known for roles both as a child and as an adult. His career has spanned more than 25 years during which time he has appeared in more than 36 feature films, as well as a number of television shows and theater productions.-Early life and career:Haas was born...
as Youngest Son - Adam BrodyAdam BrodyAdam Jared Brody is an American film and television actor and part time musician. He began his career in 1995, appearing on Gilmore Girls and other series, and subsequently came to fame for his role as Seth Cohen on The O.C. Brody later appeared in several film roles, including Mr. & Mrs...
as the Talent Agent
Supporting
- Morena BaccarinMorena BaccarinMorena Baccarin is a Brazilian-born American actress most widely known for roles in several American science fiction television shows: as Inara Serra in the series Firefly; as Adria in the series Stargate SG-1; and as Anna in the 2009 version of the series V...
as the Eldest Son's Girlfriend - Emma BellEmma BellEmma Jean Bell is an American actress. She is best known for her role as Parker O'Neil, one of the main characters in the 2010 film Frozen, and as Amy in The Walking Dead. Bell played the female lead in the thriller-horror film Final Destination 5...
as the Young Girl - Jean Brassard as Young Girl's Father
- Fabrizia Dal Farra as Concentration Camp Woman
- Francis Dumaurier as Old Lawyer
- Seth Fisher as Hotel Receptionist
- Kelli GiddishKelli GiddishKelli Giddish is an American actress. She is known for her role as Diana Henry on the ABC's daytime drama All My Children . She is also known for her leading roles in the short-lived TV series Past Life and Chase...
as Young Mother - Betty Gilpin as Young Model
- Laura Holloway as Woman #1
- Grace Nassar as Woman #2
- Jamie Hurley as Woman Tending Child
- Vanessa Kai as Asian Woman
- Jacqueline Margolis as The Widow
- Elizabeth Newman as The Waitress
- Rich Odell as Agent
- Jeanne Omlor as Young Girl's Mother
- Stu Richel as the Father
- Nicholas Sireci as Young Brother
- Matt WaltonMatt WaltonMatthew R. Walton is an American stage, screen and television actor.-Early life:Walton was born and raised in rural New Jersey. His father was a lawyer and film enthusiast...
as Young Father - Carrington Vilmont as the Doctor