Don't let the first few seconds scare you away. After that, the remaining initial nine minutes of dialog in this movie grabbed my attention. As a 49 year old guy, it was like the conversation that I've been holding in my own head was exposed, thoughts that I've never admitted to another human because of my shame, somehow brought out into the public for everyone to hear. Unbelievably honest, real, certainly a glimpse into my very brain with the same rationale and conclusions that I have come to in my own life.If you've lived enough of live, you recognize the maternal instinct of the mother for her disadvantaged son. She protects him, puts up with him and shows a patience that only a guilt laden (whether deservedly so or not) mother will demonstrate. Her description of the call of her jilted boyfriend's parent's call is also not out of the ordinary for some of us. The acting of the disabled son, the emotion, absolutely fantastic and realistic. Unbelievably realistic, like looking into someone's personal life.The movie only gets better. Watch it if you're interested in exploring the shadows of the human condition in an honest, thought provoking manner. Bravo!

I'm not sure what I make of this film. Its certainly its own film in a way that few films ever are. Is it any good? Your guess is as good as mine.The plot of the film concerns a woman who survived the concentration camps by sleeping with one of the Nazi doctors. We also follow her two sons, one who is unnaturally attached to his mother and won't leave home, and the other a man who works at a questionable modeling agency and sleeps with a good number of women. Its a very sexual and dark tale that has everyone on a downward spiral into destruction.I'm disturbed. This is a trip into the dark side of the human psyche. Rarely have I ever seen the eroticism of death so clearly stated. There is a great deal of food for thought here, but I'm not sure it adds up to much. The people here seem to be some form of extreme cases and they border on certifiable which makes taking anything away from their exploits all that more hard to take. The performances are good and I understand why everyone took their roles, but I'm still struggling to work out what they were getting at.Worth a look if you don't mind looking at the darkness and want to see a unique vision. All others stay away

This is one of the movies which will be loved by those wannabe intellectuals, because it appears profound, alternative and provoking. It offers a lot of opportunity e.g. for a class to discuss the problems and personal backgrounds of each character and their histories, but after all it's just very average and way too pretentious.About the plot: It starts off very good and interesting. Our protagonist talks about life in general, people, expectations and how to deal with that in life. His monologue pisses off his one-night-stand so badly that she gets dressed immediately and leaves.The movie switches inbetween three timelines: Childhood: He and his neurotic brother grew up with a mentally deranged mother and a father who couldn't keep her from snapping. That's the first of the timelines. You'll see the mother snap, scream and shout, destroy their kids' room for some bogus reason. Scenes appear very depressing (and annoying).Concentration Camp: The mother survived a German concentration camp by sleeping up with her angel of death, some German concentration camp doctor who apparently lets her live because she has her body to offer as a reward for that. In this time snipplet, you'll most likely see them have sex, have dinner, dance or do other couply stuff that doesn't seem very romantic, but also very depressing and pretentious. The last scene of this time period shows the mother cry over her doctor leaving, because the russians were coming. She gets a hold of herself again. But it appears that she never really got over that separation.The here and now: Most of the movie is set in the present. The mother still snaps every once in a while and destroys inventory, her husband still doesn't have the guts to do something about it, her first son (the main character) gets conned by his new business partner and sleeps around with a lot of women while the second one has a weird eating disorder. The mother meets her concentration camp entertainment again, just for the masochistic sex, which her son likes too, by the way. The neurotic son doesn't seem to ever have had sex, so he stays at home and plays the piano.All this may seem very depressing and annoying, and it is. The question I have been asking myself the entire movie, is 'What is the writer trying to tell us?' - And honestly, I have no idea. The movie ends very sudden, while the plot doesn't really thicken. There are just those three stories told, and of course their history: Protagonist gets stabbed by his masochistic Asian lover, although it might have been just regular sex, judging from previous scenes. Mother meets her doc again in a hotel and has sex with him. Brother breaks most of his fingers smashing the flap for the piano keys shut with his hand inside.There are still some weird scenes showing human body parts being cut, a human brain being BBQ'd, some more of this weird stuff without any connection to the already very weird plot. I don't even know how to comment on these scenes, so I just chose to ignore them.On the whole: Personally, that was a waste of my time. I was waiting for the movie to resolve some of the plot parts that seemed intriguing. That is by the way the only reason why I gave it 4/10 instead of just 1/10.If you like dark and wannabe meaningful movies, go ahead and waste your time. If you want to be entertained, don't watch this movie with any of your friends, that you'd like to have a fun night with later on.

This is like some crazed version of the Salinger family of cognoscenti in Franny and Zooey; all members destroyed and genius blighted by the neurotic legacy of the mother's will to survive the KZ experience in 1945. Bisset plays the mother who suffered the Sophie's Choice of seducing her executioner-doctor with sado-masochistic sexual rompings in order to survive and make a family in New york with two sons both of whom are dripping with potential but who have had their genius crushed by her wild and uncontained rages. The provider father is a shadow of a man who cannot control his wife's mental devolution nor his sons' actual contempt for him.With stilted monologues and dialogues their raisons d'etre paint them as hollow people pretending to cope with a meaningless set of unhappy lives.The one shocking curiosity is that the end of the film houses a prolonged scream of orgasmic satisfaction which stems from the aged mother now visited again by her Camp doctor as she is finally set free of her morbid longings with a wholehearted indulgence in what she has missed all these years. Out of a Mephistophelian debacle comes a renaissance of the evil promise; all the evil caused by her moral turpitude is 'excused' with this one long drawn-out scream of sexual satisfaction. Worth a watch if only for the daring moral tightrope walking ...