Love

... and no I am not talking about the characters in the film, I am talking about what happens when an A-list director "falls in love" with the idea of doing a sexually explicit film.

I want to be clear about this and I think the data will bear me out. Make a list of all the films in the last 100 years by A-list directors who felt confident they could infringe on territory formerly occupied only by the porn industry and still prevail with a hit film...? Are you done? I will save you time. I did the list myself. And the answer is none, zero, zip, nada.

Just like there are in the porn industry a handful of directors who constantly try to push the boundaries of their craft into the mainstream (which almost always means soft light and lots of white sheets, films that most resemble a commercial for TIDE) Noe, a brilliant artiste (Irreversible and Enter the Void were both brilliant) tried to push the envelope .. and ended up with junk mail.

Sure, if you are determined to see a silk purse where others are seeing a sow's ear, you could pretend that this film has a great deal to say about men's expectations about love and marriage.

But this is a review just between the writer and the reader, and we respect each other too much to lie. So I will be clear -- Noe went where angels fear to tread. And ended up with a film that, for posterity, is simply not going to make his A-reel.

Overly ambitious project about a millennial love arc that ends in heartbreak, but what are the lessons learned? Murphy (Karl Glusman) is an open-minded film student in Paris who meets Elektra (Aomi Muyock), and the two embrace their high sex drives with giddyness. However, after the relationship embraces polyamory and swingers culture, only one of the two is emotionally stable enough to handle it.

The film is directed really well by Noé, who by now should know well enough how to make it all super claustrophobic and uncomfortable for the viewer. The cinematography is good but relies too heavily on saturation but it's never really an issue. Nonlinear storytelling is clear, concise, and there's some really neat editing at parts. The story does drag often, and the film overall could've cut out 10-15 minutes of filler.

The real issue with "Love" is the lack of chemistry between Murphy and Elektra -- we just don't see it, pretty much ever. The writing is there, but the actors just cannot grasp it. This is largely because -- are you ready? -- they aren't actors; Noé met both Glusman and Muyock in a club one night and asked them to star. It's clear that he wanted to achieve the most organic and natural relationship dynamic on-screen by not using "real actors" -- but in what is supposed to be an emotionally charged film, that just doesn't work.

In fact, in a sort of disturbingly surreal manner, the very same issues that the film is trying to highlight in millennial relationships (emotional maturity and boundaries over sex) seem to show up in the unsimulated sex scenes between Glusman and Muyock. Glusman constantly falls out of character, allowing his own sexual desire to ruin the scene and any emotional impact Noé was looking for. Muyock seems bored and uninterested -- and who could blame her? -- likely due to Glusman's obvious zeal about getting paid to fuck her. I'm not sure he entirely understood the fact he was in an art film, and in remaining ignorant, he ends up verifying Noé's entire thesis: young adults, especially men, get lost in the idea of sexual nirvana over the thing that truly matters: love.

The second half of the film lifts the veil on Murphy's narcissistic and emotionally abusive behavior in the relationship, and tragically, Glusman is a good actor when portraying an unstable douchebag (and Muyock is phenomenal when screaming at him).

The film finishes the same place it starts, seeming to depict Murphy at rock-bottom in a horrible and accidental family dynamic: a fitting bookend to a relationship that was destroyed not by too much sex, but his own fear of it. The ending is eerie and powerful, and hints at the generational ripples that will be felt for decades because of his own actions. It's a great story, and sort of well-acted, but it ends up merely tripping up on its own interpretation of reality instead of offering us anything particularly new.

This film tells the story of a man trapped with his wife and child, yet he keeps on thinking about his ex-girlfriend who is not contactable. The story then winds back in time to tell how his relationships with his ex-girlfriend and his wife come about.

I have heard about the gratuitous explicit sex scenes in the film, and indeed there is a prolonged sex scene every five minutes. The story is quite interesting, as the man reflects and reminisces about Elektra, who is so adventurous that she becomes increasingly unstable. The problems encountered by the man are quite real life, and viewers can easily relate to his situation. What strikes me is that the lighting effects of the film is very remarkable, the use of focused lighting enhances the mood a lot. The slow strobe effect in the swingers' club is captivating. Overall, "Love" is worth a watch as it depicts real life relationship problems.

I always have problems with beginnings – the beginning of an article, the beginning of a film, the beginning of a relationship, simply because beginnings are crucial in setting the tone and pattern that will lead you all the way through till the end. Naturally being affected by all the negative social media propaganda that Gaspar Noé's Love (2015) has stirred, I was reluctant to even begin watching it because I am inclined to believe that films with explicit sexual content (except for Lars von Trier's Nymphomaniac, and I will tackle why in another review) are made either to sell like cheap porn for lucrative reasons or to assume a false air of originality and experimentation. I have finally decided to watch Love after it was recommended by a trusted friend of mine, and at the end of the day, one has to constantly push their limits in terms of artistic tolerance.

Back to the beginnings, Love begins with a three-minute scene taken in one shot by a steady camera of two people having what seems to be – and what actually turns out to be – unsimulated sex. After overcoming my feelings of discomfort, I started to understand what the Argentinian director is trying to do here. Is it a pornographic scene? It definitely is. But is it meant to be sexually arousing? I would have to argue for a no. Sexual excitement requires a certain amount of build-up, but jumping directly and unexpectedly into the act generates nothing but feelings of shock and unease that would need some time to fade away.

The story then unfolds in a backward linear plot. We are introduced to Murphy (the man in the opening sex scene), a frustrated young man who lives in a small apartment in Paris with his detached girlfriend and their son. The memory-evoked reversed narrative is instigated by a voice message he receives from the mother of his ex-girlfriend Electra (the woman from the opening sex scene), asking for his help to find her daughter. The man and the woman from the first sex scene are no longer strangers; we get to see how they broke up, how they managed their relationship, and finally how they met, with a heap of very long unsimulated sex scenes in between.

As a voyeur (a person who discreetly watches other people in intimate, usually sexual, positions) I was extremely confused since the enjoyment element was missing. Is it because the sex scenes were too many, too long, too real, or too unnecessary? In one of the scenes Murphy says, as a cunning gesture to voice Gaspar Noé's desire, his biggest dream is to make a movie like no other that truly portrays sentimental sexuality. He also tells Electra: "I want to make movies out of blood, sperm and tears. This is like the essence of life. I think movies should contain that, perhaps should be made of that." Well, we see a lot of sperm and tears in that film, there is no doubt about it. It is true Love depicts relationships from an exceptionally crude, raw angle I have never seen before. Sex in cinema – and in life in general – is an uncanny subject; it lies at the essence of everything, everybody knows it is there, yet nobody talks about it overtly.. not in realistic terms at least. The film feels emotionally real. Too real. And not just when it comes to sex, but also to dialogue and performance. In one scene, Murphy tries to get Electra back and he keeps knocking on her door, after a few seconds she opens the door, apparently under the influence of drugs, and screams at him in the most deranged manner you could ever imagine. The camera does not move; it feels like a terrified neighbor watching the scene from the stairs. Most of the camera movement and angles follow the same pattern throughout the movie: the neutral uninvolved medium shot. Mid-film I realized it was not the sex scenes that made me uncomfortable but the fact that the film is devoid of any cinematic, stylistic euphemisms. In conventional romantic films, there is an invisible line separating the romantic from the sexual – love from desire. The subtle message is always: love is sublime and desire is vulgar. The reality of the things, and as presented in the film, is that both are inseparable in their sublimity and vulgarity.

I cannot tell for sure whether I like it or not. Cinema, as Slavoj Žižek puts it, is "the ultimate pervert art" because it does not directly satisfy our desires but manipulates them. It does not show us our capabilities, but give us the illusion that we are capable. Cinema draws the line between imagination and reality and keeps crisscrossing the boundary: it takes imaginary elements and roots them in reality, and sugarcoats real elements in imaginary wraps. The trick is not to call a spade a spade, i.e. not to place two firm feet on one side of the spectrum; otherwise you would shake the balance between reality and imagination that the viewer cannot find in real life.

Whatever your sentiments are towards the film, Noé – purposefully or inadvertently – raises some important issues: what if cinema does away with the aesthetics of presentational euphemism? Would it undermine its role as an artistic medium? Would it put the viewer on the defensive, being constantly faced with the unrefined reality of what (s)he dreads/desires?

The way I see it is that Noé created an extremely stimulating film, not sexually as he probably desired but intellectually and sentimentally.

I'm grateful I watched Love alone and had the chance to struggle with and make sense of all those feelings and thoughts by myself. I can imagine how uncomfortable it would be watching it in a movie theater with other people, let alone how the actors felt while shooting!

'Love' will most likely be discredited by many due to it's sheer honesty, like many films of it's kind are. Yet this honesty, as brutal and daring as it might seem, feels necessary to connect with and understand what the characters are going through, on an entirely new emotional level. In the words of Murphy, Gaspar Noe might have made the only movie that truly depicts 'sentimental sexuality'.

'Love' has many subtle and not-so-subtle references to the underlying story and to the director himself. Gaspar's mother is named Nora Murphy, while Murphy's son is named Gaspar and Electra's ex boyfriend - Noe. His favorite movie is Kubrick's '2001', while hers is Lang's 'M', both of which seem to fuel Murphy and Electra's behavior throughout the movie, where Murphy is often aimlessly overwhelmed with hope and desire, while Electra seems unable to forgive.

Gaspar Noe constantly cuts through the past and the future, using the techniques he is so familiar with since Irreversible. The movie abruptly switches between various stages of Murphy's and Electra's relationship, always cutting back to the present, where Murphy's is in absolute emotional agony and despair, raising a child with Clara.

At times Murphy and Electra are so deeply engrained in one another that their fights and dialogues seem outright comical and immature, as if we are observing a 16 year- old couple. But this is truly where 'Love' stands out. Being in love feels and looks exactly like this, it's raw, emotional and brutal yet foggy and sweet; when no one else exists or matters.

In one of Electra's and Murphy's conversations they talk about the sad reality that they are going nowhere and dragging each other down, they discuss taking a break. It is an extremely sad and emotional scene, where the thought itself brings so much fear into them, that they simply end up holding each other even tighter.

The script for 'Love' is only 7 pages long. It is full of beautiful and weird dialogues and extremely emotional, 'free-played' graphic scenes. These scenes however are not there to impress the viewer or open the doors to the unknown. This is also not a nymphomaniac-like sexual exploration. Gaspar Noe does a masterful job in showing us the true emotional aspect of love, in it's raw and relatable form, sex.

The sound-score is stunning, with the music gradually changing depending on the mood and the context of the scenes. Even though a lot of times it seems like we are watching the same people 'fuck' in the same positions, different context, feelings and music make each of these scenes truly unique and mesmerizing on it's own.

Noe also does a wonderful job in his minimalistic depiction of the story and the scenery. Murphy and Electra always wear contrasting colors, while the background is usually very simple yet fitting to them both. As if to say that when in love, everything should be seen through the eyes of the lovers.

'Love' might sometimes seem silly, overly graphic and way too sentimental, yet it hits all the right notes.