Gas­par Noé: ​‘The porn I grew up with was much clos­er to real life’

It seems like a hap­py coin­ci­dence (or maybe it was sim­ply meant to be?) that LWLies and Gas­par Noé should come togeth­er to talk about Love – in the City of Love, no less – at a time when anoth­er deeply pas­sion­ate, some­what con­tro­ver­sial roman­tic epic is vying for our atten­tion. Not that Todd Haynes’ Car­ol and Noé’s 3D sex odyssey have all that much in com­mon. On a crisp, sun­ny morn­ing in Sep­tem­ber the writer/​director shared his per­son­al views on life, love and movies.

“Orig­i­nal­ly I had writ­ten a treat­ment under the title ​‘Dan­ger’, and I want­ed to do it before Irréversible. I got togeth­er what­ev­er mon­ey I had at the time, which was not a lot, and tried to shoot as much as I could. Then I ran into Vin­cent Cas­sel in a club and he said he and Mon­i­ca [Bel­luc­ci] were free that sum­mer, but he didn’t realise how much full frontal nudi­ty was in the script. The day before we start­ed shoot­ing Vin­cent called me and said they couldn’t do the movie because the only thing they as a cou­ple had left was their inti­ma­cy. Of course I had to respect their pri­va­cy, but we had the mon­ey and I was going to make a movie, so in one sec­ond I said, ​‘Let’s make a rape revenge movie told back­wards instead.’”

“When I was 15 I remem­ber see­ing images of Sylvia Kris­tel in Emmanuelle and that had such a huge impact on me. I became obsessed with Sylvia Kris­tel, I want­ed one day to date a girl who looked like her. And then I saw Maud Adams in Octo­pussy. I saw that movie like six times, not because I care about James Bond – for me he was invis­i­ble – I just thought Maud Adams was so damn sexy.”

“In real life when you’re hav­ing sex you’re not watch­ing the gen­i­tals, you’re watch­ing the mouth or the neck of the oth­er per­son. I shot Love in this way, with these kinds of close-ups, because that’s how we remem­ber our for­ma­tive sex­u­al experiences.”

“No one ever says ​‘I love you’ in porn. You nev­er see peo­ple kiss­ing or a woman get­ting preg­nant or hav­ing peri­ods – things that hap­pen in real life. I enjoyed watch­ing porn movies for many years but one day sud­den­ly I stopped. I used to like watch­ing VHS and porn movies in the­atres but now pornog­ra­phy is all on the inter­net and to me the com­put­er is the least arous­ing thing. I grew up with ​’70s pornog­ra­phy which had more nar­ra­tive and the girls had nor­mal boobs and they had pubic hair. It was great. French pornog­ra­phy was maybe a bit bour­geois, but it was much clos­er to real life. When it comes to my movie I real­ly want­ed to por­tray a true love sto­ry so I need­ed to include full frontal nudi­ty. It’s a return the erot­ic cin­e­ma of the ​’70s which sad­ly doesn’t exist anymore.”

“In France peo­ple are far more con­cerned with sex than mon­ey. It’s a sta­tus thing. When you go to an Amer­i­can film fes­ti­val, peo­ple ask you how much it cost, how much did it gross, where­as in France it’s all about who fuck­ing who.”

“About three few years ago they start­ed sell­ing 3D home video cam­eras that you could link to your TV at home. It was around the time that my moth­er got very sick and before she died I filmed her a lot in 3D. When I watched the images back it was very shock­ing, it felt like she was in the box, like the TV had become a cas­ket. There was some­thing creepy but very touch­ing about those images. It was then I knew I want­ed to make a movie in 3D. And I want­ed to shoot a cumshot because I thought it would be fun­ny in 3D.”

“Each time I get a bad review I google the name of the writer. I had an awful review in Vari­ety, like two pages of insults, and I googled his name and saw a pho­to of him, with his asex­u­al face and a bowtie… That’s exact­ly the kind of guy I would nev­er talk to. I noticed the old­er male crit­ics seem to dis­like this movie a lot more than the female crit­ics. I don’t know why, maybe the male review­ers think they’re com­pet­ing with the young strong dick of the male character.”

“I recent­ly got this book about psy­chosis, which describes all the kinds of psy­chosis a per­son can have. I know that I can be para­noid, which is why I don’t like smok­ing mar­i­jua­na, because it makes you para­noid, but I dis­cov­ered that my cre­ative pat­tern is most­ly man­ic obses­sive. That seems to be the best way to describe my approach to mak­ing movies, because when I com­mit to script or a project I very quick­ly become obsessed. I want to make a movie about the hor­ror of reli­gion, which will maybe be like Pasolini’s Salò, so right now I’m obsessed with that idea.”

Love is released in UK cin­e­mas 20 November.