The film centers on the wealthy, dysfunctional Krohn family of Los Angeles. On the verge of his 60th birthday, patriarch and TV producer Perry Krohn is diagnosed with inoperable cancer and is told he has only months left to live. He delays telling his thirtysomething children, has-been actor Bertie and adopted daughter Rachel.
Bertie, who is promoting a scheme to short-sell life insurance policies to AIDS patients, is a devoted single parent to his daughter Tiffany, but constantly worries about the erratic behavior of Lidia, his drug-addicted ex-wife. Rachel, who works at an auction house, becomes drawn into Judaism as a means of coping with a spirituality crisis. She also makes an alarming discovery about her biological parents.
At a party, Bertie meets HIV-positive activist Aubrey, with whom he becomes entangled in a reckless sexual relationship. Perry also embarks on an affair, one he believes to be his last, with Mona Deware, an English actress appearing in his wildly successful Star Trek–like series, "Blue Matrix."
Critics noted the film's "certain visual elegance and tonal control", but said its grim subject matter would only be appealing to a specialized audience.[5][7]Janet Maslin of The New York Times noted that the film pares down much of the material from the novel and said it doesn't "quite hang together", but "it does capture the black humor and mournful angst at the heart of the material".[2] She concluded, "Wagner successfully echoes his book's bleak resonance, but his straightforward ability with a camera is no match for what he can do on the page. He does give the film a cool, calculated look that preserves its discreet mournfulness and saves it from emotional overkill."[2]
Nathan Rabin of The A.V. Club wrote, "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."[8]
