Murphy is an American living in Paris who enters a highly sexually and emotionally charged relationship with the unstable Electra. Unaware of the seismic effect it will have on their relationship, they invite their pretty neighbor into their bed.
- Released: 2015-07-06
- Runtime: 134 minutes
- Genre: Drama, Romance
- Stars: Karl Glusman, Aomi Muyock, Klara Kristin, Ugo Fox, Juan Saavedra, Gaspar Noé, Isabelle Nicou, Benoît Debie, Vincent Maraval, Déborah Révy, Xamira Zuloaga, Stella Rocha, Omaima S., Nikita Bellucci, Angell Summers, Ian Scott, Anna Polina, Kelly Pix
- Director: Gaspar Noé
Comments
- fernandoschiavi - 7 September 2023
Noé dilutes the strength and impact of the beautiful and stimulating scenes, in addition to inserting others that are undeniably gratuitous, aiming only to shock the viewer
Gaspar Noé returns to the charge and uses a far from new trick to get the public's attention in "Love": open and shameless sex on the big screen. The idea is not bad. Take a subject capable of taking people to the cinema out of curiosity - an art film with explicit 3D sex scenes - and, with the room full, tell the story you want. For that, filming its actors with a lot of frontal nudity and graphic sex scenes helps to keep the attention of the public that went after this lure. Lars Von Trier also did this in the two volumes of "Nymphomaniac (2013)", by the way. The ideal would then be to surprise everyone with a deep plot, showing that all the noise made around the film made sense. The spectator would understand that he would be facing a different product. Bold. Maybe revolutionary. Certainly, this all crossed Noé's mind, in this project that had been incubating for some time and finally being realized. But the artist's intention was not present in the finished product. If there are some good moments on the scene, they don't come close to the amount of expectation that surrounded this filmmaker's production.
Noé uses the voice-over narration exactly to make this intimacy explicit, exploring his character's darkest thoughts, and putting out everything he is unable to say aloud. In a way, this is what the director also does with the explicit use of sex: explore the intimacy of the people portrayed there. However, if the narrative part of "Love" deserves praise (with an intricate construction, but never complex), in terms of technology, it may not please so much (although, perhaps, that is the intention). There is a maxim that directors of authorial works mix with their characters, making it difficult to know what is autobiographical and what is just a curious similarity. It is not uncommon for there to be an alter-ego of the director in the film, for example. In Love, however, practically all the characters are Gaspar Noé. There are the most obvious references, such as Electra's ex-boyfriend, played by the director, who bears the name Noé, passing by Murphy's son who is named Gaspar. But the protagonist himself is a young filmmaker who is fanatical about "2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)" - notoriously one of the French-Argentinian director's favorite films - and who dreams of making a film with "blood, sweat and semen". Electra, in turn, is a woman with mixed ancestry, a person who has difficulty fitting in - something very easy to link with the director's background. Nora Murphy, Noah's mother's name, also serves as the name of two different characters. Everything is very personal, very intimate. But even that doesn't make the movie more interesting.
The metalinguistic commentary, linking cinema to the record of sexual love present in Murphy's desire, sounds pretentious at times, especially due to the absence of dramatic curves in the work. The expectation with regard to "Love 3D" is that the film would go far beyond its thematic cousin, exceeding the issue of "Nymphomaniac: Volume 1 and Volume 2" to deeper and more visceral levels, as Noah did before. , the plot of the feature grows, but not enough to delve deeper than the Von Trier film, as the Swede manages to touch on serious issues of mind and soul, while the former involves only the second element, becoming "only" an essay on erotic nostalgia, filled with great scenes that more embellish than add. There is even an interesting comment, between the differences of thought in terms of cinema, seen in the clash between the Americans and the French, intelligent by the way, but very little close to its full potential. The drama experienced by the duo of protagonists is not strong enough to overcome the too many sex sequences. Gaspar Noé weighs his hand in the first scenes in which we accompany the couple who, screaming, exchange insults in a wave of blind rage. After these scenes that border on the unbearable, it is very difficult to care about the duo. We know in advance that each of those moments that the two share is an exercise in futility, since they lead nowhere. Those who expect a film about intense love, as propagated by the director in interviews about Love, will see a drama that walks through the sick, pinches misogyny and uses sex only as an audience decoy.
Some good ideas that appear at the beginning of the plot, such as the dry cuts that put Murphy in touch with his past in the blink of an eye, are abandoned in the course of the story, even though the flickering screen effect continues until the end. The intense use of red in Murphy's memoirs creates an interesting counterpoint with the gray, lifeless scenes of the present. Noé shoots some sexual scenes well - especially the one that opens the film, framed like a real painting that moves. The director knows how to use backlighting to create some beautiful compositions. But he also has fun using 3D to show an extremely close-up ejaculation. It's no wonder he made the entire movie with technology just because of this particular scene. Living two-dimensional characters and without much charisma, the actors have a difficult task when it comes to capturing the viewer's attention. Karl Gusman was the only one with any experience before Love and he is the one who bears the most responsibility, as the story is told from his character's point of view. In an uneven performance, Gusman recently took a firmer lead. The same can be said for her on-screen partners, the beautiful newcomers Aomi Muyock and Klara Kristin.
The serious mistake of "Love" is not fulfilling its premise. Aiming to make a film in which sex does not empty love and love does not romanticize sex, Noé puts his feet in his hands and is stagnant in the middle ground, not knowing where to go. With a shallow and banal script, "Love" does not reach the depth it intends to reach about what love is, having adolescent discussions without any intensity. In this way, he anchors himself in what, let's face it, is the biggest attraction of the film: the controversial scenes of explicit and real sex. With that, the director seeks to make them his salvation, repeating them with great frequency, in a failed attempt to keep us inside the film, especially during its dragging last 40 minutes. Thus, Noé dilutes the strength and impact of the beautiful and stimulating scenes, in addition to inserting others that are undeniably gratuitous, aiming only to shock the viewer or please himself.
As if seeking to satisfy his own desires wasn't enough, it's hard to swallow the director's other egocentric and narcissistic demonstrations, making forced references to his previous works and himself. Well, let's go. Murphy has a son named Gaspar. In his room, we see a miniature in neon colors of a building called LOVE. During one of several sex scenes with Electra, they have sex in a cold and scary red tunnel. Oh, let's also remember Electra's ex-boyfriend named Noah (who I'll leave to you to guess who plays this role). Finally, Murphy is a film student who wants to make films that combine love and sex. In this logic, could we conclude, then, that the character's inability to make these films is also a reference to the director himself? Noé seems to try, throughout the film, to give us justifications. First, the use of 3D, unnecessary as it adds little to the narrative, is valid in only one very specific scene. Regarding the choice of protagonists, Murphy and Electra are two young art students involved in a relationship open to experimentation, which would supposedly legitimize the loose and meaningless dialogues about the infinity of questions that surround love. And, finally, the director uses a great cliché to defend his heaviest scenes, which coincidentally or not, are also the most disposable: a couple's search for new sexual experiences in an attempt to save a relationship that is heading towards the end.
What is love? Asks a poster next to Alex and Marcus' bed in "Irreversible", a 2002 film that is possibly the director's best-known and most revered film. 13 years later, Noah still doesn't seem to know how to answer. The fact is that sex was, is and always will be a great subject to fill movie theaters. However, lately we are frustrated with some promises made to us. And perhaps that is where Gaspar Noé's greatest victory lies: courageously fulfilling the realism he promises, the director puts in his film practically everything that we have been wanting to see on the commercial circuit for some years now. It would be unfair to classify Love as just another porn, but the line that separates it from an entire universe ready to be accessed from our own computers is, in fact, quite tenuous. - rgb-03178 - 9 June 2022
Porn a la Gaspar Noe
First scene, porn! As the film unraveled, I sensed that something was familiar about it. Searched what other films Gaspar Noé had done and had seen one of them: Irreversible, which was as bad as this one. - irishsailordog - 4 December 2021
Very probative, warm, hopeful & so sadly accurate film of today's youth - beautiful !!!
I've watched it three times, will again if ever one can buy a Region One uncensored DVD. To clarify the explicit-sex vs porn question. The version I saw, yes lots of graphic actual sex like showing an ejaculation and felatio, but the version I saw also had no vaginal penetration or explicit female genitalia; tho an explicit shot of a fully breasted pre-op transexual - for me all within context, and necessary for this story on post-modern neurotic-sexuality.
Lot's of very probative screenplay lines in this film, sprinkled in here and there, for myself, gave this film the warmth and moral reflection we human's are so capable of in this destructive age of neurotic pornography where sex has become more important then love. The sex portrayed IS where the young of today are at - and yet still - they can sense something related to this mystery we call love is missing - - what is this complicated mysterious thing our previous generations called "love?"
One example is the three main characters, stumbling into the topic of Abortion at their first introductory cafe-meeting. The 17 year old says (paraphrased from memory), " . . . Well if my mom would have had an abortion, I wouldn't be here!" IF Noe had wanted to make a pioneering porn-flick for mainstream "art" cinema, why would he have put in an anti-abortion line like that in the screenplay, especially the way all three discussed this topic. In fact there are several scenes thru-out this film touching on a family-oriented future for ALL three of these characters; Electra wants to have a family with SEVEN kids, he replies maybe they should start a farm.
AND the movie's last minutes are a very emphasis on children which brings up my favorite line in this film from the now 17/18 year old new mom to the reluctant father (who, by the way, HAS taken-on the struggle to stay with mom) she says to him as she walks out the door with a crying baby at hip - "I'll take care of your future while you take care of your past." What an upbeat way to handle what our older generations would have reacted to with jealousy and anger; his longing for an ex.
The film ends with the man's being both a loving father and in deep deep regrets. I found this film, to be just a beautifully honest exploration of where today's societal consensus struggles on WHICH to, or IF to prioritize as to sex and love? For why I feel he left us all just hanging - PERFECT ENDING.
So how will this all end as to that dangerous dance between love and sex - we each and all face, secretly or openly? - gajthi - 22 February 2021
What are man and woman to each other?
A woman brings a man to life, makes a man feel human, otherwise he is mud and dust. Women make our hearts beat and continue to beat.
I cannot speak for women.
Woman are independent, made of iron. Is this a facade? Partly true? Something about man seems to grab a woman's soul and makes it warm.
The entire movie feels like context for the final image of them in the bath, holding each other. It's such a powerful image to me it feels almost biblical... forget what you do, how you look, what your personality is like, because we are all flesh, bones, blood and soul. Their positions at the end fit like a puzzle, forming a circle, for man and women are complete together - the circle of life. There is no greater reason to live than for someone else.
I really felt that at the end.
