I'm Losing You (1998)

This movie will stay with you

This is a movie about loss and love and tragedy and hope. The characters are well crafted and especially Andrew McCarthy's and Rosanna Arquette's acting is absolute brilliance. "I'm Losing You" leaves you with the wish of staying with these characters, of finding out how their lives continue and if they will be able to find happiness in the end. I know that I will carry this movie in my heart for a long time.

Oh, and on a lighter note: In the movie, Frank Langella's character is the producer of a science fiction series called "Blue Matrix". Every Star Trek fan shouldn't miss those scenes. They are hilarious. With all the catastrophes that Andrew McCarthy's character has to endure, he isn't spared wearing a Next Generation inspired outfit (including the forehead). And Janeway fans, watch out for the "Blue Matrix" captain's new hairdo. :-)
February 27, 2006

A Meditation on Death and Dying: Reconstructing a Family

Bruce Wagner's screen adaptation of his novel I'M LOSING YOU has some of the more intelligent dialogue to be encountered in a film. Since Wagner also directed this little gem, brimming over with excellent actors, we can be assured that his message of death as a necessary component in the cycle of life is intact. Despite the dour content of the story this film actually leads to a credible sense of how deaths can ultimately be redemptive: it is all in how vulnerable we allow ourselves to become in coping with this life change.

The story is focused on a wealthy Los Angeles family headed by television producer of sci-fi series Perry Krohn (Frank Langella), married to a psychiatrist Diantha (Salome Jens) despite having a 'helper' mistress Mona (Amanda Donahue), 'stepfather' of a disillusioned daughter Rachel (Rosanna Arquette) and a has-been actor son Bertie (Andrew McCarthy) who makes a living selling back insurance policies to AIDS patients: the father has been diagnosed with inoperable cancer and his attempts to set his will in order is the catalyst for the story. The son is separated from his ex-wife, a disturbed addicted woman Lidia (Gina Gershon) and the two fight over custody of their young child Tiffany (Aria Noelle Curzon). Complicating matters is the fact that Rachel has never been told until now that her biologic father murdered her mother and committed suicide AND that her stepfather had a onetime sexual fling with her mother.

Things begin to consistently fall apart: the son falls in love with one of the AIDS victims, Aubrey (Elizabeth Perkins), to whom he sells insurance who has a son and lives in horror that she will soon die and her son will be abandoned. About this same time Tiffany is killed in an automobile accident, the fault of her drugged out mother, and Rachel embraces her Jewish heritage by learning how to perform the body cleansing ritual performed as a loving act on the dead - the dead being Tiffany. And at this peak of crises, Aubrey dies in a hospital, succumbing to every complication known to AIDS.

How this fractured family comes together in the midst of all these losses and lifetime barriers to communication serves as the resolution of this complex but infinitely interesting story.

The actors all give bravura performances, relishing the smart dialogue and the multilayered meanings to each encounter captured by the fine cinematographer. This may not be a film for everyone, but for those seeking more form a film than entertainment will find much food for thought here. Recommended. Grady Harp, September 05
September 15, 2005

Well acted, but unsatisfying, I'd say.

We were two people who saw the film, and we both agreed that while well-acted, the word that came to mind was "unsatisfying." Some strong scenes, and some good acting, but some of the dialog was - I can only call it - "artificially sharp." (But that might be the way the characters were supposed to be, according to the writer.) We were sort of looking forward to seeing the film just end, to be honest. I recorded it from TV, and have now erased it. March 19, 2005

A Wonderful Film

I rented this film on a whim while looking around a video store. I was hooked from the first scene on. The story centers around a television producer who has just been diagnosed with terminal cancer and his family. His adopted daughter is on the verge of a nervous breakdown. His son a frustrated actor with a young daughter and a self-destructive ex-wife, becomes involved with an HIV-Positive woman. The film is basicaly about death and redemption. The story is beautifully written and the acting is superb. The standouts are Frank Langella who plays the dying father, Rosanna Arquette as his troubled daughter, and Andrew McCarthy (who goes deeper than i've ever seen him go in this film and shows just what a superb acter he is.)as his son Bertie. This film is a deeply felt film and should appeal to anyone who appreciates great writing and acting. November 10, 2001

he didn't lose me cos he never had me

Though I am unfamiliar with Bruce Wagner's novel, which he has adapted and directed himself, going from the book's editorial comments I have researched, the movie version seems to be vastly different. The book was praised for it's powerful and revolting representation of Hollywood characters and their drug-dazed sexually abusive lifestyles. Oliver Stone is quoted as saying the book "is like a wire stretched across the throat." However Wagner's screenplay seems to have lost most of the book's characters, their cell-phone and email means of communication, the stench of gossip, and his much admired humour. Perhaps if the film worked on it's own terms, this might be forgiven, but even as an adaptation of a best-selling novel, it leaves the viewer in a state of exasperation. It reads like a foreign movie where someone forgot to type the subtitles. Wagner cannot be faulted on any major technical level as a film-maker, apart from the essential one of providing a clear narrative. As the title suggests, the theme here is death. The interconnecting characters are either dying or interact with someone who is, specifically from cancer or AIDS. However since all the sturm und drang eventually has no point because all the threads are never brought together, we're left unsatisfied. Wagner's casting is another issue. The idea of Andrew McCarthy as a bad actor is initially funny, but since he doesn't possess the skill to play a father or a believable lover, for that matter, the casting seems suicidal. Rosanna Arquette also has a problem portraying a woman with a dark past, who may be unbalanced. The best performer is Elizabeth Perkins, quite magnificent as a woman who is HIV positive. It's only a pity she is partnered with McCarthy. It's wonderful to see Salome Jens on screen again, but she is given little to do, as is Buck Henry, Amanda Donohoe, and even Frank Langella. Wagner uses some cute watch and time double entrendes, gives us the phenomena of an HIV positive only party, and presents L.A. Jews and their bathing of the dead. But there's not one laugh line. The ones who so admired him for his supposed accurate portrayal of Hollywood may be appalled to see that he sold out for the movies. March 25, 2001

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