**Attention: There are many spoilers ahead… and stuff about sex, death and blood…**

What I learned about love from one of my favorite films is a lot. Cemetery Man lays it out for you in a splendorously creepy, painful, yet beautiful world. Read along and learn. The play on words tips you off. In Italian dellamore means “of love” and dellamorte means “of death”. First off, this flick has a legendary sex scene that you’ll just have to see for yourself. What good lil’ goth doesn’t want to do it among the tombstones?

Francesco Dellamorte played by Rupert Everett is tortured by love and by the undead. He works in a cemetery where those buried come back as zombies within seven days. Francesco is transfixed by a widower. She says she loves him too. They get it on. It seems like she dies. He waits for her to ‘come back’ so he can kill her. She rises again. She shoots her, not knowing she really wasn’t dead the first time. He kills his only one true love- whose character is only referred to as “She”. Are you following me?

Cemetery Man’s world gives you another chance and another, but they trick you, they virtually rob you. “She” comes back again in the form of another woman with the same face. This imitation of “She” illustrates something interesting. Cemetery Man shows the depravity of love. Francesco gives up his manhood, figuratively and literally for a woman who then turns around goes out with someone who violated her. A young teen lover lets her dead love, Claudio eat her alive. She simply doesn’t care that he’s a zombie. She’d go with him anywhere and give of her body, her life.

In the classic Rule of Three, “She”’s face returns again in a young student who turns out to be a prostitute. She tells Francesco what he wants to hear- that she loves him. She plays the part. Which version of “Her” is trustable? None? Francesco is tired of being burned. He instead literally burns “She” #3 alive. He plays the part of the grim reaper, convinced that killing the living is better than letting them continue life as “the living dead”, of course a comment on the mundanity of society. Good ‘ole Frank becomes Death. He is tired of being used and abused in life.

Suspension of belief here is that Rupert Everett is, of course, gay – he portrays a very conflicted straight guy. This seems to be a trope in the vein of Ryan Gosling’s character in the film Drive (2011), if only he had the right woman. She was so bad to him, turned her back on him. He is again alone in a cold world. Let’s consider this flipped- a woman protagonist that keeps getting led astray. Do guy watchers say- if only she had me- that poor damaged, sexually used character?

Along with this same theme. Beyond titular, Sex and Death 101 (2007) also touches upon dellamore, dellamorte. Recommend. Death is a woman, particularly Winona Ryder’s Nell, Death Nell. Yes, there’s a lot of sex in it. Women take advantage of Simon Baker’s Roderick Blank. He’s but a tool for them sometimes. Writer/Director Daniel Waters of Heathers fame puts a spin on ‘normative gender roles’.

Of course, in Gone Girl (2014), there’s that murder during intercourse scene. You know what I’m talking about, right? Sex and Death- they’re both “in our marrow”.

What’re your favorite films that explore Sex and Death, at the same time?