But that doesn't take away from what he, Kalymnikos and their stars (not only Harden and Skaggs but Brennan Keel Cook as Esmé's boyfriend Scott) achieved with a film that's excellent by any standards and especially amazing coming from Lifetime.
You can watch the movie online on Netflix, as long as you are a. When you see Camille (Marcia Gay Harden) care for her disabled daughter.
Writer Anthony Jaswinski and director Alex Kalymnikos tell this story from both mother's and daughter's point of view, and the result is a powerful, chilling fable about just how far certain people will go to feel 'loved' and 'needed.' I'm rating it nine stars instead of 10 because the switch from Camile's to Esmé's point of view about a third of the way through is awkward and writer Jaswinski could have had an even deeper and more profound movie if he'd used the 'Citizen Kane' narratage technique and told the Stollers' story from the various points of view of the people involved in it. Marcia Gay Harden, Emily Skeggs and Tate Donovan are playing as the star cast in this movie. Marcia Gay Harden plays a mother forcing her daughter (Emily Skeggs) to be sick in Love You To Death. Esmé is in a wheelchair, she's bald (there's a fascinatingly cruel scene in which we see her mom shaving her head) and she's been told she has had bone cancer since she was 4. 'Love You to Death' is a profound and powerfully disturbing movie about the relationship between Esmé Stoller (Emily Skaggs) and her mom Camile (Marcia Gay Harden, a far more illustrious 'name' than we're used to seeing on Lifetime).
