Sadomasochistic Holocaust Porn

Director Boaz Yakin last waded into Jewish cinematic waters with A Price Above Rubies, about a married Hasidic woman who wants more out of life, which got lukewarm reviews. Now he’s back with Death in Love, opening tomorrow, which is garnering stronger reactions. It’s the story of a sadistic Holocaust survivor (played by Jacqueline Bisset), the mother of two screwed-up sons, who slept with a Nazi in order to save herself. “Not since Liliana Cavani’s epically stupid The Night Porter has a filmmaker so wantonly ripped off the Holocaust for the unsavory purpose of strutting his unprocessed sadomasochistic fantasies,” says L.A. Weekly. The Holocaust, Yakin tritely mused to the blogger Marshall Fine, is “a symbol for a certain kind of pain and violence that people keep inside and end up passing on from generation to generation.” The son of secular Israeli expats who sent him to Orthodox schools in New York City, Yakin added that the film’s fictional plot derives from deep wells of feeling—“this movie comes from the last 43 years of my life.” Rex Reed expects viewers to walk out screaming.

Death in Love [LA Weekly]
Welcome to Dysfunction Junction [NYO]