I Love You to Death

In Tacoma, Washington, a quiet-sounding confession sets the stage for a volatile marriage to unravel with brutal honesty. Joey Boca, a Catholic Italian American who runs a pizza parlor with his wife Rosalie, admits to cheating on her—at least seven times with different women over a short, fuzzy span of two or three weeks. Yet even as he seeks forgiveness in the confessional, his memory about the exact tally and the details remains slippery, hinting at a pattern more than a single lapse. The couple’s life appears stable on the surface: a busy family, a restaurant, and an apartment building that Joey manages, occasionally renting out units to his lovers as part of a dangerous, if unofficial, “maintenance” routine that he defends as simple work-life balance.

Behind the family business lies a web of tension. Rosalie is supported by her Yugoslavian mother, Nadja, who dislikes Joey’s domineering way and the heavy load he places on Rosalie—cooking, cleaning, childcare, and catering to his every demand—despite Rosalie’s own hard work at the pizza shop. A young employee at the restaurant, Devo Nod, quietly harbors love for Rosalie and tries to push her toward leaving the relationship, insisting that Joey’s pattern of infidelity means she deserves better. Rosalie’s faith in Joey remains stubbornly intact, buoyed by the sense that his long hours deserve sympathy rather than suspicion.

The spark that tilts this fragile balance comes one day at the library, when Rosalie unexpectedly spots Joey sharing a kiss with one of his lovers among the shelves. The sight shatters her, and she first contemplates a fatal act of despair—overdosing on sleeping pills. Yet despair quickly hardens into a fierce resolve. Rather than allowing herself to collapse, she enlists her mother’s help in a plan to kill Joey, convinced that his infidelity has hollowed out the vows they once shared.

The attempt to remove Joey is neither swift nor clean. Nadja first enlists a masked, anonymous killer to strike with a baseball bat, but Joey’s reflexes save him from death. Undeterred, Nadja uses her mechanical skills in a more insidious scheme: she tries to blow up Joey’s car with a bomb, only to find that the device fails to detonate. Undaunted, they direct their efforts toward drugging him, dosing his spaghetti with sleeping pills in a bid to slow his metabolism to a fatal pace. Yet even this plan falters; Joey simply experiences a stomach cramp and blames a stomach virus rather than a killer plot.

As the family’s plans grow more desperate, the circle expands to include Devo, who is torn between his devotion to Rosalie and his fear of taking another life. He finally agrees to prove his loyalty by shooting Joey, but his nerves get the better of him and he fails to meet his target, injuring Joey only slightly behind the ear. The mission then falls into the hands of two inept, perpetually stoned cousins, Harlan and Marlon James, hired for a bargain price. Marlon’s cowardice keeps him away from the scene, leaving Harlan to fire, but the attempt merely wounds Joey, not killing him. The months of plotting have left everyone exposed, and a bar convict who overhears the plan eventually reveals the conspiracy to the authorities.

When the police arrive, Joey lies in a hospital bed, alive but unaware of the full extent of the danger he has faced. Rosalie, Nadja, Devo, and the James cousins are arrested, while Joey’s own perspective begins to shift. He sees the harm his actions have caused and, at the prompting of his mother, shifts toward mercy rather than vengeance. He declines to press charges and instead works to bail everyone out of jail, signaling a change in his outlook and a renewed willingness to fight for his marriage.

As the situation cools, Joey prepares to salvage what remains of his relationship with Rosalie. He brings flowers and chocolates, hoping to reconcile, but Rosalie—still hurt and unsure—slashes forward with a mix of longing and hesitation. In a quietly charged moment, the two finally reconnect in a janitors’ closet, where their shared history and renewed passion emerge in a difficult, intimate reconciliation. The reunion unsettles Devo and surprises Rosalie’s mother, who watches the tension between loyalty and love unfold in the cramped space where two people rediscover the bond they nearly lost.

What remains at the end is a story of fault and forgiveness, of a marriage tested by desire and deception, and of a man who realizes too late how deeply Rosalie cares for him. Joey’s journey from self-justification to repentance, from fear of loss to a cautious renewal, unfolds with a cautious tenderness that contrasts with the violence of the failed plots around him. The family’s dynamics—temptation, control, obligation, and ultimately reconciliation—sit at the center of a film that dares to look at infidelity not as a single moment, but as a chain of choices that ripple through love, trust, and the life they all share. In the end, the couple’s embrace signals a fragile hope: that even in the wake of betrayal, a marriage can find a path back to closeness, if both partners summon the courage to forgive, to listen, and to choose each other once again.

Last Updated: October 03, 2025 at 06:46