From Cannes: "Love" Beautiful, Blasphemous

“Love” is not a film that can be calmly discussed. It is full of crazily stylistic shots, blinding psychedelic lights and sets, non-chronological narratives, electronic music mixed with post-rock and Erik Satie, and, above all, almost one hour of hardcore sex scenes. It has the equal potential to be a masterpiece or to be a hideous, narcissistic attempt to draw attention; as it turns out, it is a mixture of both.

It would be a huge mistake if the viewer were lured by the title into believing that it is a warm uplifting comedy suitable for a family movie night with grandma. The movie starts with a long shot of a handjob in slow motion, and the intensely graphic does not stop there. Director Gasper Noe explores almost all possibilities for intercourse, from couples to threesomes to orgies. To distinguish the film from pornography, all these scenes are shot in a strikingly artistic and madly stylized way. In one sex scene, the scarlet bed is lit by a red neon-like light, the naked bodies are as solemn as Greek sculptures, and the rest of the room, covered in shadow, looks like a Renaissance oil painting. There are numerous shots that are impressively daring and attractively taboo, among which is a closeup of a penis ejacuating towards the camera, in addition to a scene of penetration shot from the inside of a vagina—all the more striking since the film is shot in 3D. Compared to “Love,” even Lars Van Trier’s “Nymphomaniac” looks like a romantic comedy.

The visual experimentation of “Love” is not limited to its sex scenes. For much of the movie, the camera follows the protagonist from behind and smoothly accompanies him through hallways and into different rooms, creating a mesmerizing sense of movement. When the narrative cuts back and forth between the past and the present, the composition often remain the same, with the protagonist at the same position in the frame. Many still shots suddenly cut to black and immediately cut back, and the result is very similar to Barnett Newman’s paintings, in which a vast area of one color is interrupted by a strip of another color.

The story of “Love,” although told in non-chronological fragments, is rather simple and creates the film’s biggest problem. Murphy (Karl Glusman) is an American in Paris, and he falls crazily in love with Electra (Aomi Muyock). They experiment with sex and drugs, but Murphy’s fidelity eventually makes Electra leave him. The film follows Murphy’s thoughts when the relationship is over and traces back through time as he remembers everything that occurred between him and Electra while blaming himself for his stupid actions. In the first hour, the story unfolds quite nicely, but in the subsequent hour and a half, it just keeps repeating itself in an awfully boring and self-assured way, as the two keep breaking up, getting mad at each other, getting back together, having crazy sex, and breaking up again. The didactic and self-serving lines about the sentiments of sex and meaning of life just make it worse, and, when the two protagonists spend the last thirty minutes screaming at each other almost non-stop, all the beautiful visuals cannot save the film from being dull.

“Love” is an intensely well-crafted work of visual art put together with a boring, repetitive story. While director Gasper Noe creates brilliant shots, he lacks the fundamental craft of storytelling, which undermines an otherwise wonderful movie.