Death in Love
Running time 97 minutes
Written and directed by
Boaz Yakin
Starring  Josh Lucas, Jacqueline Bisset, Lukas Haas, Adam Brody

Death in Love is a grim, crestfallen and downright depressing sexual psychodrama about a New York family that is not only dysfunctional but self-destructive beyond hope. The mother is the great, underrated Jacqueline Bisset, who delivers another performance that showcases the dark side of her considerable talents, though it is wasted shamefully. After suffering through so many dumb movies lately about incurable mama’s boys, it’s a tonic to see two sons who hate their mother—especially the beloved Ms. Bisset. But the role is so relentlessly dour and hateful it doesn’t take a shrink to see why.

The emotional and psychotic qualities that turn her grown sons melancholy and futile can be traced back to her early years. A Holocaust survivor who never recovered from her sexual awakening in the bed of a Nazi doctor who performed ghastly medical experiments on the Jews in the camps, she has never been able to distinguish between pleasure and pain. A lifetime of neuroses have cast a long shadow on the sexual and psychological progress of her husband and two sons, all three of whom spend most of their time masturbating. The older brother, played in a raw stretch of emotional fire by Josh Lucas, is a 40-year-old modeling agent—empty, unfulfilled and oversexed without feelings of emotion or joy—whose inability to relate to women except with physical violence has rendered him impotent. The younger son, played by the always too sensitive but weirdly affecting Lukas Haas, is a weak, undernourished, emotionally dependant musician who still lives at home with his miserable, unloved father and angry, domineering mother. Even after he leaves home and moves in with his brother, his fear of daylight and his compulsive eating disorders (his foods are not allowed to touch) are clear danger signals that trouble is on the way. This is one Jewish mother who is no Molly Goldberg. She’s instilled in her family only one philosophy: Never show what you feel because you’ve got nothing to show that everyone doesn’t know already. It’s a talisman to live by that seems to describe the rest of the movie, too.

What makes pretentious, low-budget-indie filmmakers think the world is waiting breathlessly to absorb their personal memoirs like groundbreaking new recipes for meatballs? Death in Love is based on the personal memoirs of writer-director-producer Boaz Yakin, who fared better with A Price Above Rubies, with Renée Zellweger miscast as a rebellious Hasidic Jew. Mr. Yakin’s Orthodox roots have apparently inspired nothing but misery. Fortunately, we get a guided tour of toxic territory by a very good cast. More than just another no-talent Hollywood hunk like Matthew McConaughey (whom he sometimes resembles), Mr. Lucas has range and charisma. He mixes light comedies with dramas of significance, and even tackles challenging assignments on the Broadway stage. Kneeling by his bed naked, sobbing into the sheets and wallowing in self-pity, he exposes emotional layers that go beyond the usual roles he plays, like Sweet Home Alabama with Reese Witherspoon. Mr. Haas has come a long way since he made his debut at 8 in Witness. And Jacqueline Bisset is electrifying. But the structure is a mess and the characters are so remote, from both the script and each other, that you end up caring nothing about them at all.

Like Charlotte Rampling in Liliana Cavani’s equally horrifying but undeniably haunting film The Night Porter, Ms. Bisset finally comes to life when, after many decades, the Nazi torturer who abused her in the camps turns up in Manhattan and invites her to resume their sado-masochistic affair. “This may be purgatory,” Mr. Lucas tells his whacked-out younger brother, “but it’s better than hell.” He never explains why, and there is no evidence to support his assumption. The movie spirals downward to a tragic conclusion that is inevitable. The father jumps off the roof. Mr. Lucas turns to rape and gets stabbed, lying on the floor in a pool of blood. Mr. Haas slams the piano on his knuckles, breaking his fingers. More I cannot tell you, but it doesn’t end there. No wonder Ms. Bisset walks out on her entire family, smiling for the first time, and ends up behind a locked hotel room door, screaming. My guess is that so will you.

rreed@observer.com

Susan Montford’s While She Was Out, from her own screenplay, based on the short story by Edward Bryant, begins as a crisis-laden contemporary Christmas story with Kim Basinger’s housewife being yelled at by her husband, just home from work, and finding the house a mess. I mean, he really yells at her, making her cower as he raises his fists and bangs them against the wall. As he mixes himself a drink, she goes downstairs to drive into town for some last-minute Christmas shopping. The sounds of Christmas carols are everywhere as she tries to find a parking space, and has to drive a short distance from the department store.

We soon learn that she has maxed out her credit card, and a casual conversation with a prosperous-seeming former high-school classmate drops her into the category of a woman who has lost her chances in life. When she gets back into the car, another car pulls up behind her, partially blocking her way out. Four hooligans looking for trouble, led by Lukas Haas, pour our of the car. They begin making lewd comments to the housewife, to which she responds with no lack of spunk, making us respect her for the first time. When a parking lot attendant orders them to move their car, an argument ensues, and the chief hooligan angrily shoots the attendant dead.

The housewife seizes the opportunity to drive away, but is quickly pursued by the hooligans because now she is the only witness to the crime. To make a long car chase short, the housewife crashes into a dead end at the edge of a forest. Realizing that she is in dire peril, she gets out of the car, takes a tool box out of the trunk and runs away into the forest, followed on foot by the hooligans.

Of course, we know that the top-billed housewife will find some way to survive the mad-dog predators. But how and with what? As the chase continues, the tool box takes on magical properties as it disgorges one deadly weapon after another even though it contains no firearms.

The action premise is undeniably ridiculous, but also very satisfying as the formerly hapless housewife turns into one “dangerous bitch” in the almost admiring words of her pursuers.

I can’t tell you any more without spoiling the ultra-feminist fun. But I promise you the spectacular ending will make every harried housewife in the world ecstatic. I found it interesting that the gifted Mexican director, Guillermo del Toro, of Pan’s Labyrinth fame, served as Ms. Montford’s executive producer, along with Don Murphy of Transformers fame.

asarris@observer.com