Happy nine-month anniversary, Yan and Elise! My gift to you two lovebirds is this glimpse into your immediate future: It’s gonna suck!

So goes the game of Eroticide, a truly twisted tale of romance by Canadian filmmaker Matthew Saliba, ringleader of 2009’s underseen Frankenstein Unlimited anthology and director of the 2011 Italian exploitation homage Amy’s in the Attic.

This short begins with Yan (Jocelin Haas) and Elise (Stephanie van Rijn), our heretofore happy couple, celebrating their momentous occasion at a restaurant. Who should walk in and interrupt but Kendra (Lisa Di Capa), Yan’s ex-girlfriend; she evidently hasn’t let go of their half-decade together, because she delights in disparaging Elise in general and Yan’s erectile dysfunction.

Later that night, as Yan and Elise make love (she puts it rougher, actually), Saliba skillfully intercuts their thrusts with Yan’s imagined submissive activities with Kendra rather than his “silver medal” gal. But the real weirdness doesn’t kick in until the next morning.

Saliba’s specialty isn’t off-kilter subject matter; it’s whatever lies at taking a hard left turn when one reaches off-kilter subject matter. Viewers never can be sure what awaits them in the next scene. What does can be shocking, but never just for the cheap sake of doing so; it serves the story.

And this story hints at a lot that it does not depict, adding layers of mystery to an unsettling surface. It’s suggested that Yan and Elise had their “meet cute” via gruesome car crash which may have resulted in his bedroom troubles; says the French-speaking Elise, “The road to your heart was paved with my blood.”

That you want to know more about its origins speaks highly of Eroticide. All three cast members do great work, but Di Capa gets the juiciest role as the manipulative rhymes-with-blunt. She also gets the last word at the harsh ending — abrupt but appropriate. If you’ve seen Brad Pitt deliver the denouement of Killing Them Softly, you have a hint of the cruelty to come. —Rod Lott