In Death in Love, one of the most challenging movies this summer, Jacqueline Bisset is a Holocaust survivor, but only by the loosest definition of the word "survive." Now a grown woman with a family of her own, she's passed her trauma on to the next generation. The eldest, Josh Lucas, has become a womanizing con artist. The youngest, Lukas Haas, is an obsessive, phobic recluse. And that's looking on the bright side. Josh Lucas explains ...

Q: Usually people call something "the feel-good movie of the year" as praise, but you couldn't say that about this.

A: It's almost a feel-bad film [Laughs]. If you're a fan of Sweet Home Alabama, you don't necessarily not like this movie, but it's a totally different kind of movie. It's not a drama, it's a tragedy, filled with pain and violence and deep intellectual contemplation. The one thing people consistently say -- whether they love it or hate it -- is they can't get it out of their mind for a couple of days, and that's really what all of us set out to do.

Q: What was your reaction when you first read the script? Did you ask yourself, "What is this?" I mean, the mother -- sleeping with the Nazi doctor...

A: I think those are the questions that [director] Boaz [Yakin] is asking, this idea of can you fall in love with, not just your captor, but your Nazi murderer? Boaz is talking about his own relationship to being Jewish, and to the profound sense of pain he feels about the Holocaust, and then to contemplate a parent, or his mother having slept with a guard, and even desiring that. It goes into this whole Patty Hearst, Stockholm Syndrome. I think Boaz is asking some very harsh questions about love, about guilt, about what families deal with, and what they pass on to each other. Can you actually pass on pain through genes, through cell structure?

Q: Or it's passed on by the way they relate to each other. Since the mother had gone through this major trauma, she couldn't really love in a normal, happy, healthy way, she passes along the kind of relationship she had with her captor to her family. Sadomasochism -- with and without sex -- can apply to a lot of things.

A: I think you're dead right. This is like taking Hostel and Saw or any of those torture films and putting them in a context of something deeply personal and real. I think Boaz wanted this film to be so raw, you either run from the cinema or you sit down with your family for three days, and talk about what your deepest, darkest secrets are.

Q: Did you do that?

A: I did not. I was single when I made this film. I don't think I could have made this film while I was in a relationship, actually. I think it was too painful to do, and too risky. Being in a solid, healthy relationship, you don't want to go to the places this character goes to. You don't just go to work and even mock having a S&M relationship without that causing an impact on your life.

Q: Can you separate the sex scenes from the S&M ones?

A: I don't know, because for me, I went into that naively. Most sex scenes are about sex or love, and this was about pain. This was more dealing with abuse and self-lacerating self-hatred, things beyond sex. So I would walk away from the days we did these scenes feeling really dark to say the least. I was like, "Great, glad I experienced that, I never need to do that again, I know that's not who I am!" [Laughs]. I'm not Jewish, I'm not yet 40, I don't have any of the same level of emotional baggage this character does, but I could understand pieces of it.

Q: Part of your character, too, is that he's a con man -- but a con man who can't see when he's the mark. 

A: I think one of the interesting things about him is that he's hungry for hope, he's hungry for love. And I think all human beings, even the greatest monsters -- there's a little moment early on with the SS doctor, and you almost see him light up like a child -- every human being wants love, light, and joy. My character made all the choices to go in a dark direction, partly because when he tried to choose light, someone got back at him and it confirms all his worst fears about humanity. But I don't believe that's how life goes. That's just how this story goes.