Explicit unsimulated sex as an attraction aside, this is probably Noe’s worst film—too meandering, overlong and built around an annoying ‘inner thoughts’ voiceover that quickly becomes tiresome.
Review #2,673
Dir. Gaspar Noe
2015 | France | Drama, Romance | 135 min | 2.35:1 | English & French
Not rated – exceeds R21 guidelines for unsimulated sex and explicit nudity
Cast: Karl Glusman, Aomi Muyock, Klara Kristin
Plot: Murphy is an American living in Paris who enters a highly sexually and emotionally charged relationship with Electra. Unaware of the effect it will have on their relationship, they invite their pretty neighbour into their bed.
Awards: Nom. for Queer Palm (Cannes)
International Sales: Wild Bunch
Accessibility Index
Subject Matter: Mature – Love & Sex
Narrative Style: Straightforward
Pace: Slightly Slow
Audience Type: Niche Arthouse
Viewed: Screener
Spoilers: No
Made in between Enter the Void (2009) and Climax (2018), Love was a passion project from Gaspar Noe that may be better described as passionless.
Noe intended to create a film based on the emotionality of sex, but while the sense of intimate atmosphere is strong, and its so-called selling point of having actors engage in unsimulated sex on camera does fulfil its provocative aim, Love feels overlong, meandering and uninspired.
I’m convinced that this is no more than an 80-90 minute feature at best, instead of a two-hour-plus slog, assuming one could get past a narrative almost entirely built around an annoying ‘inner thoughts’ voiceover technique.
There is nothing wrong with using voiceovers, but the execution here is mundane and gets tiring pretty quickly. Worst of all, it is in English.
“Secrets make you darker.”
If it had been shot in French and with a French (or French-speaking) protagonist instead of a rather snooty American character trying to enter into a sexually-charged relationship with a woman, I think Love could have been more palatable.
But that’s just me; I couldn’t get into the shoes of Murphy, the leading man, let alone feel anything for his whims and woes. So, Murphy gets into bed with Electra multiple times, and in one sequence, together with their blonde neighbour in a threesome that Noe leaves nothing to the imagination.
Unsimulated sex in cinema is not new; we can go back to the likes of Oshima’s In the Realm of the Senses (1976) or in more recent times, films like 9 Songs (2004) or Shortbus (2006) to get a sense of it as an exhibitionistic, though not necessarily always erotic, ‘attraction’.
Noe’s work feeds into this base desire though it provides neither new nor deep insights as to what it means to love, or to express love through sex, least of all, the emotionality of it.
Grade: D
Trailer:
Music:
Eternality Tan 