Based on writer-director Bruce Wagner's own 1996 novel, I'm Losing You tells the story of one egregiously dysfunctional Hollywood family. On his 60th birthday, patriarch Frank Langella is informed that he has only a few months to live, while both of his children (Rosanna Arquette and Andrew McCarthy) struggle with mortality issues of their own. Then things get really bleak. I'm Losing You was executive-produced by David Cronenberg, which is appropriate when you consider its emotionally barren, alienated characters and its morbid fixation with death and disease. Death is a huge presence in Wagner's film: Everyone is obsessed with it, knocking on its door, or merely trying in vain to escape it. You almost expect to find the Grim Reaper himself loitering in each frame, puttering about aimlessly or loitering malevolently. Joyless, morbid, and frequently over-written (at one point Arquette informs an acquaintance that she "was into Coleridge and the Cabala before either were trendy"), I'm Losing You seems intent on rubbing its viewers' faces in the pain and degradation of contemporary life. Equal parts bleak soap opera, pitch-black comedy, and morose meditation on the nature of death, I'm Losing You is as compelling as it is repugnant and sorrowful. Large parts of the film don't work—almost every scene involving the free-falling Arquette is embarrassing—and Wagner isn't above killing off a child to raise the misery stakes just a little higher. Still, if nothing else, I'm Losing You is as difficult to forget as it is to enjoy.