Love

Direc­tor Gas­par Noé’s rep­u­ta­tion has been built on what one might gen­er­ous­ly deem the less dig­ni­fied aspects of the human con­di­tion. If the Argen­tine-born film­mak­er is by this point a ​“name” in inter­na­tion­al cin­e­ma, it’s in the most lit­er­al sense, as a head­line-gen­er­at­ing, con­tro­ver­sy-stok­ing star of his own conception.

Hav­ing already pushed the bound­aries of vio­lence, misog­y­ny, and drug abuse (among oth­er delight­ful sub­jects) in such pur­pose­ful­ly provoca­tive films as 1998’s I Stand Alone, 2002’s Irréversible and 2009’s Enter the Void, it makes a cer­tain kind of sense that Noé would not only one day arrive at a full-blown sex flick, but at a full-blown 3D sex flick. In light of such con­sid­er­a­tions, that Love – né́e Gas­par Noé’s Love – ful­fils all the tit­il­lat­ing tenets of said genre is unsur­pris­ing; that it’s as simul­ta­ne­ous­ly ten­der, touch­ing, and even taste­ful as its title implies is, for this film­mak­er, the most shock­ing devel­op­ment of all.

To be clear, Love retains many of the styl­is­tic hall­marks that make Noé’s film­mak­ing so frus­trat­ing; this time, how­ev­er, these same gauche aes­thet­ic flour­ish­es are tem­pered by a gen­uine sense of human­i­ty and, most impor­tant­ly, a hereto­fore unac­knowl­edged sense of humour. The seem­ing irony of Noé mak­ing a 3D porno called Love is lost on absolute­ly no one, least of all the direc­tor, who goes to great lengths to prove just how uniron­i­cal­ly he views this sto­ry. The nar­ra­tive, there­fore, is equal parts earnest and ener­vat­ing, track­ing in flash­back the roman­tic and sex­u­al pas­sions of a young cou­ple from the throes of a breakup to their ear­ly days as star-crossed lovers.

We watch (and watch) as Mur­phy (Karl Glus­man) and Elec­tra (Aomi Muy­ock) make love with numer­ous peo­ple, in a vari­ety of places and posi­tions, the pair enjoy­ing the strength of their youth­ful libidos even as their emo­tion­al bonds appear to grow ever­more ten­u­ous. Lat­er, when Mur­phy turns a ménage à trois with their neigh­bour, Omi (Klara Kristin), into an ongo­ing sex­u­al liai­son, his infi­deli­ty results in an unex­pect­ed preg­nan­cy and ill-equipped for­ay into parenthood.

If the plot sounds like bad day­time tele­vi­sion, it is so by design – every­thing about the film seems to speak in the most base vocab­u­lary pos­si­ble. The per­form­ers – Glus­man a work­ing actor in his first sig­nif­i­cant role; Muy­ock and Kristin non-actors plucked by the direc­tor from a night club – while com­mit­ted, seem as if they were select­ed as much for their unpol­ished qual­i­ties as their will­ing­ness to engage in unsim­u­lat­ed sex. Their dia­logue man­ages to tran­scend any lan­guage bar­ri­ers by con­ve­nient­ly return­ing to the view­er to a uni­ver­sal­ly pubes­cent per­spec­tive. Like­wise, Noé’s man­ner of visu­al­is­ing the film is, by his stan­dards, rather con­ven­tion­al, shoot­ing most of the expos­i­to­ry scenes in medi­um-length two-shots, and the sex scenes in either sta­t­ic set-ups or from over­head angles empha­sis­ing the inti­ma­cy of the pro­ceed­ings. For bet­ter or worse, few of the famil­iar­ly gar­ish sequences or elab­o­rate­ly chore­o­graphed track­ing shots of Noé’s past work are in evi­dence here.

All of which begs the ques­tion of why Noé chose to shoot the film in 3D. His less demon­stra­tive for­mal approach, cou­pled with the stereo­scop­ic lens­ing, occa­sion­al­ly lends a pleas­ing depth to the image, exploit­ed most expert­ly in a neon-lit club sequence and a num­ber of near-hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry scenes set out­side the con­fines of the bed­room. But oth­er­wise the tech­nol­o­gy does lit­tle to deep­en the sen­so­ry effect of watch­ing these actors’ bod­ies com­mu­ni­cate and com­min­gle in unin­hib­it­ed dis­plays of eroticism.

It may sim­ply have been the most obvi­ous way to sub­vert expec­ta­tions, which, thank­ful­ly, Noé only rarely gives into – most mem­o­rably with an inevitable ​“shot” point­ed right in the face of the audi­ence – instead opt­ing to stress the film’s almost play­ful­ly self-con­scious demeanour. The posters of con­tro­ver­sial films (Salò, The Birth of a Nation) dec­o­rat­ing Murphy’s bed­room walls, for exam­ple, are down­right sub­tle com­pared to when he and Omi decide to name their new­born son (wait for it…) Gas­par. And if that’s not enough the direc­tor him­self shows up as Electra’s sleazy ex-boyfriend, join­ing in on the fun with a sil­hou­et­ted sex scene all of his own. Whether you find these flour­ish­es indul­gent or ingra­ti­at­ing will like­ly come down to your patience for Noé and his self-styled per­sona. At the very least it’s nice to see him final­ly hav­ing a lit­tle fun at his own expense.