Is Gaspar Noé's Love The Most Explicit Mainstream Movie Ever?
Gaspar Noé is no stranger to making controversial movies.
But his latest effort ‘Love’, which has premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, is said to be his most explicit yet – making it a serious contender for the most sexually explicit mainstream movie ever.
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It announced its coming – ahem – a month or so back with a poster which is considerably too rude to show here, and yesterday film fans were queuing around the block to get a first glimpse.
Now the film has landed – in 3D, no less – details of just what makes it so explicit are starting to leak out.
It tells the story of Murphy (Karl Glusman), a American living unhappily in Paris with his girlfriend Omi (Klara Kristin), with whom he has a two-year-old baby.
But he still obsesses about his former girlfriend, Electra (Aomi Muyock), who he left after having an affair with Omi (which resulted in the child). Electra is the one who got away.
So far, so pedestrian, but there are some notably explicit moments, including – it’s hard to put politely – a graphic, 3D shot of 'head on’ ejaculation.
It’s all possible Noé was aiming to emulate the massive success of sexuality explicit drama ‘Blue Is The Warmest Colour’, which took the Palme d’Or award at the festival last year.
Critics are now giving their verdict on the movie, but the reviews seem to be slightly less explosive than the action on screen.
Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian, giving the movie three stars out of five, said: “As ever with sexually explicit films, some airy sophisticates here at Cannes are going to claim that they found Love 'boring’. I guarantee it.
“And I can only say that like Pinocchio, their noses are growing - and leave it at that. Love is crass, and ridiculous and often uproarious.”
Of the 3D action, he adds 'it often looks like the audience is going to need to duck when the male lead and his hefty phallus turns around, like Eric Sykes and his ladder’.
Peter Debruge in Variety said: “Surprisingly, Noé seems to be channeling Terrence Malick for a change, offering up an atheistic (and X-rated) twist on 'To the Wonder’, with its hovering camera, gobbledygooky narration and melancholy choice between two women, neither of whom he deserves.
“You’ve gotta hand it to Noé for leaving no taboo unturned, and for putting so much of himself into a film that’s bound to leave titillation seekers resenting its creator during the long stretches of wallowing introspection between climaxes.”
Robbie Collin in the Daily Telegraph added: “The problem with 'Love’ isn’t its purpose, which I find wholly laudable, nor the sex itself, which is beautiful and also - to use a taboo critical term - sexy. It’s that both these things deserved a far richer and more intelligent film to support them. Catherine Breillat’s 'Romance’ and Bertrand Bonello’s 'The Pornographer’ both gnawed at the boundaries of taboo, but as you watched them, you felt both films working on your soul. But Noé’s film is all look, no touch.”
The Hollywood Reporter wasn’t massively impressed either, saying: “If you cut out all the sex scenes in Gaspar Noé’s Love, what’s left is a wistful, some might say sappy story about heartbreak, made with impressive cinematic elan but somewhat shallow emotional depth, for all its tragic posturing.”
Offering the movie a B+ rating, Indiewire added: “It would be disingenuous to suggest I wasn’t diverted and occasionally dazzled by its 3D visuals, often entranced in that visceral, pure cinema kind of way, which is itself remarkable for happening during a Gaspar Noé film apparently designed to 'give guys a hard-on and make girls cry’. I didn’t cry and as far as I could make out, not a lot of the other thing happened either, but a softer Noé (not a hard-on pun I promise) does not necessarily have to be a bad thing.”
As mentioned, Noé has produced seriously controversial material in the past.
Though some critics loved his 2003 movie 'Irreversible’, many found its keystone scene – the brutal and prolonged rape of the film’s star Monica Belucci – too much to take.
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Image credits: Rectangle Productions/Getty
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