Death in Love

Review

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. The torrid affair enables Mom (Jacqueline Bisset) to survive the Holocaust, but she goes on to destroy her sons, a con artist (Josh Lucas) with a penchant for S&M who victimizes women, and a basket case (Lukas Haas) who’s terrified of them. Really, there’s something here to offend everyone: It’s the kind of film that makes you want to shout invectives at the screen. But it also reminds you how little there is in the way of movies about how family traumas get worked out (or just acted out) in the bedroom. We need more insane artists to light the dark paths ahead. — David Edelstein