Love

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!

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.

I know I only rated it a seven out of ten but that's because I admit this film's faults. It certainly isn't near perfect but I felt very moved by the characters and their story. Lots of people may not be able to relate to this film however those of us that do can say that everything about this depiction of love has been experienced and is real. As a grown single adult living in today's dating world I can attest that the relationship between Murphy and Electra exists. Their obsession with each other and with sex that led them into a deep and possibly unreal infatuation was honest and thought provoking. Love sometimes doesn't make sense and can't be described or made logical. Their connection was what drove them into darkness, madness and despair. Love is completely all consuming on any level it's represented on. So many times have I given myself up for something that a year later I looked back on and couldn't reconcile my behavior, and so many times have I given myself up to something to only sabotage it before it completely devoured me. I don't know if I have been in love, but I have felt what these characters are going through and I wouldn't know what else to call it. In the vein of Harmony Korine and Lars von Trier I think Gasper Noe is a genius. Yes this movie is uncomfortable, yes the acting isn't great and yes the story is dry, but it's a genuine take on what relationships look like for some people in their mid twenties to early thirties and I loved every second of it.

Let's just get this out of the way, there is a lot of unsimulated sex in this movie. This is definitely on par with porn, but since it was shot with "real" actors it was allowed in theaters. I did see somewhere online that there is a super cut of all the sex scenes from this and it comes in at just under 30 minutes, so let that inform your decision to watch or not.

This is a story of a couple that are in a very sexual relationship and decide to invite their beautiful neighbor to join them. This causes problems.

If you like 9 Songs then you will most decidedly like this. Love probably features more sex but does offer a lot more plot as well.

The script is laughable and the acting (often voice-over), too. The 3D sex is well marketed. And yes, during certain scenes people got up and left. Yet. The film doesn't argue to be anything beyond a meandering stroll into the gallows melancholy. And it does this very very well. The film features no highbrow intellectual conversations but instead, favors the same lines you've probably slung at your lovers. Again and again and again. Just like the sex you've had with your lovers again and again and again. You know their bodies and you know how to please them and above all, you know how to hurt them. Sorrow. There's a resplendent simplicity here that hypnotizes the viewer.

You hear music banging inside the club, yet the lovers are outside in halflight. Having sex, obviously. This is a good image of what this film surprisingly achieves best: intimacy. And it fights for that with it's magnificent camera-work and editing.

But what would this review be if it didn't talk about the 3D sex? Love and cinema are inseparable. Love stories are why you stick glued to a chair for a couple of hours. Raw sex is part of love, yet, films used to cut to birds necking after a kiss. Then it became steamy windows. Signs, metaphors, analogies, semiotic nausea. And here, Noé takes that away which makes the film even coarser, and ultimately more brutal.

I wanted to write this review because the whole marketing ("finally a love story restricted for -16) and shock value (an eye-rolling warning in the opening credits) have cheapened what this film has achieved and I encourage viewers to look beyond.