Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. Kraken and Rav both joined me at Sundance this year and Kraken's got a few reviews to run by you. This one is for Boaz Yakin's DEATH IN LOVE. The only thing I heard about this movie was that there was some masturbation... a lot of masturbation... So, naturally I wonder how I could have missed this movie. Luckily Kraken didn't. Here's his take!

The first fifteen or so minutes of this movie will fuck up your eyeballs so bad you'll need to see a priest afterwards to cleanse them. Bodies ripped apart, young bodies screwing, old bodies humping... oh my. DEATH IN LOVE is about what happens when you love a monstrous Nazi scientist and how it'll mind-screw you and your kids 50 years later.
Josh Lucas plays a character who just turned forty and this landmark point has him reflecting on life and what it all means. He feels his flesh letting go, he smells himself going sour and is obsessed with the sweetness of youth that he is losing and his continual disconnection from the world around him. He makes love to women like a vampire, absorbing their vigor, then emotionally and mentally tortures them afterward until they can't stand him anymore. He's numb, and getting worse every day. In essence, he's losing the point of it all and misery loves company.

His home life might have something to do with this as we see him visit his parent's apartment where his 35 year old brother (Lukas Haas) still abides. His brother is a far worse mirror of what he could have become... crazy, out of work, asexual, unable to even eat without inane ritual. His father is an enabler of his abusive mother who has violent outbursts towards her children that you get the impression are not anything new. Throughout the story we see glimpses of the mother's grisly history and how her past as a young woman in a Nazi camp has had serious repercussions on herself and her family. Also, someone from this past has also come back to haunt her as some of her "friends" start dropping around her like flies when death comes back to claim his love.

Outside of his family life we see that Lucas's character is also an accomplished con man of sorts. He works for a "talent agency" that is nothing more than a con business that collects money from women with stardust in their eyes. But there is something sad to the work he does because when he teaches his acting classes, that are basically there just to con more money out of the hopeful future models/stars, he does it with real passion and knowledge... as if in another life he could have actually been more than a false prophet. A new agent is brought into the business (Adam Brody) and his love for life, honesty and optimism is so fresh to Lucas that he can't help but be attracted to him like a mean old crow would be to a bright and shiny new object. But one wonders if the sins of his mother's first love will destroy even this moment of happiness in his life.

DEATH IN LOVE is a very complex film, that at times makes it feel a little slow so I wouldn't suggest it for anyone with attention deficit. But the stories that are woven here about a dysfunctional family trying to salvage itself and searching for some kind of point to the world around you resonated with me. It's beautifuly directed and shot by director Boaz Yakin (Remember the Titans) and Danish cinematographer Frederik Jacobi, both of which I'd love to see work together again. It's a very dark drama not for the faint of heart or the prudish. There are a lot of very graphic details in this film that I think are an important part of it to express the gravity of what the character's are feeling and where their particular points of view come from, but I'm sure will offend quite a few. But for me, I want my films about the point of it all and previous sins coming back to haunt you to be offensive and gritty, because life is pretty dirty at points and I'm glad DEATH IN LOVE didn't pull any punches.

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