Love (2015)
Country: FR/BEL
Technical: col/2.35:1 135m
Director: Gaspar Noé
Cast: Aomi Muyock, Karl Glusman, Klara Kristin
Synopsis:
An American film student in Paris conducts a torrid affair with a free-spirited artist, but their sexual experimentation finally gets the better of their relationship. Two years later, saddled with second best and a kid, he receives a phone call from her mother, distraught over her disappearance, and it comes back to him how unhappy he is.
Review:
As in Irréversible, Noé starts at the nadir and then shows us how we got there. There is always something to admire in his film-making (or at least something to make the head turn), in this case the quality of the colour image, and some of the compositions and tracking shots, but at this length it is self-defeating. The much vaunted unsimulated sex is thrust at us brutally from the off (and again, and again), but adds little to the central thesis that this is the woman in his life he actually loves, as opposed to simply the hottest, or the one he shouts at the most, which he spends the rest of the time doing. In fact, there can be few less prepossessing leading characters than Murphy, who reminds us of the butcher in Seul contre tous, so full of contempt is he for anything foreign or threatening - a true American. And another thing: why does everyone in the film speak French-accented English, even the mother on her recorded voicemail message?
Country: FR/BEL
Technical: col/2.35:1 135m
Director: Gaspar Noé
Cast: Aomi Muyock, Karl Glusman, Klara Kristin
Synopsis:
An American film student in Paris conducts a torrid affair with a free-spirited artist, but their sexual experimentation finally gets the better of their relationship. Two years later, saddled with second best and a kid, he receives a phone call from her mother, distraught over her disappearance, and it comes back to him how unhappy he is.
Review:
As in Irréversible, Noé starts at the nadir and then shows us how we got there. There is always something to admire in his film-making (or at least something to make the head turn), in this case the quality of the colour image, and some of the compositions and tracking shots, but at this length it is self-defeating. The much vaunted unsimulated sex is thrust at us brutally from the off (and again, and again), but adds little to the central thesis that this is the woman in his life he actually loves, as opposed to simply the hottest, or the one he shouts at the most, which he spends the rest of the time doing. In fact, there can be few less prepossessing leading characters than Murphy, who reminds us of the butcher in Seul contre tous, so full of contempt is he for anything foreign or threatening - a true American. And another thing: why does everyone in the film speak French-accented English, even the mother on her recorded voicemail message?
Country: FR/BEL
Technical: col/2.35:1 135m
Director: Gaspar Noé
Cast: Aomi Muyock, Karl Glusman, Klara Kristin
Synopsis:
An American film student in Paris conducts a torrid affair with a free-spirited artist, but their sexual experimentation finally gets the better of their relationship. Two years later, saddled with second best and a kid, he receives a phone call from her mother, distraught over her disappearance, and it comes back to him how unhappy he is.
Review:
As in Irréversible, Noé starts at the nadir and then shows us how we got there. There is always something to admire in his film-making (or at least something to make the head turn), in this case the quality of the colour image, and some of the compositions and tracking shots, but at this length it is self-defeating. The much vaunted unsimulated sex is thrust at us brutally from the off (and again, and again), but adds little to the central thesis that this is the woman in his life he actually loves, as opposed to simply the hottest, or the one he shouts at the most, which he spends the rest of the time doing. In fact, there can be few less prepossessing leading characters than Murphy, who reminds us of the butcher in Seul contre tous, so full of contempt is he for anything foreign or threatening - a true American. And another thing: why does everyone in the film speak French-accented English, even the mother on her recorded voicemail message?