I finally watched Gaspar Noe’s latest film, Love. I heard it was pretty bad so, I admit, I began watching ready to be disappointed. But I wasn’t.
The film got polemical because it features a lot – A LOT! – of sex scenes in it, and unsimulated ones at that.
Just like in Irreversible, the film is not chronological. We get to see how the characters reached this awful situation, from intense love to destruction.
The story revolves around a young American guy, Murphy, and the “love of his life”, Electra. Of course, Murphy’s law is not going to let that go smoothly. The couple decides to be honest and enjoy sex freely. It starts the way it usually starts, they find a nice girl next door and have an awesome threesome. The many sex scenes are absolutely beautiful. Noe, who directed Enter The Void, got us hooked on his hypnotizing shots. Apparently, he wanted to make a movie about love and sex, to show not only a mechanical act just for the sake of shooting sex, but to convey emotional relationships through sex. I think he was quite successful in achieving that. Finding love can make you grow and understand a lot of things, but if it’s not handled properly, it can also take you down.
Murphy is on a little cloud, sharing a passionate relationship with the love of his life and having threesomes. Because he’s a man, he thinks he can – and should! – have everything. So he breaks the pact of honesty and fucks his neighbor again, without Electra. The girl then gets pregnant and, being pro-life, decides to keep it. Electra hates and leaves him.
I, by the way, thank Noe for this disturbing POV shot. I think he’s kind of obsessed with the whole circle of life thing.
Some people told me it was just a very hetero-normative way of depicting sex and that the film – which lasts more than two hours – was boring. It is true that it is from a guy’s perspective and it’s not really focused on showing women’s desires or any kind of sex outside the spectrum of heteronormative life, but I think that’s exactly the point. It shows how twisted men’s egos can get and how our puritanical upbringing is showing its cracks. Some men are too scared to be honest and jealousy finds its way through. Because they have to possess. They have to control. Because they’re scared to lose what supposedly makes them men. What’s a real man? Is it fucking women? Having your dick sucked and thinking you’re the king of the world? The problem is, women also have strong sexualities and they’re less and less eager to keep them down. Men feel threatened and fuck everything up. Murphy turns himself into the victim, which a lot of men do, as soon as something doesn’t go their way.
I was really able to identify with Electra’s character, because I had myself a very passionate relationship once, which was very strong but also awoke a lot of insecurities in my partner. Because I do porn, because I talk a lot about sex and I like to point my camera at men’s dicks, which often makes men suddenly very insecure about their identity. Performance. Possession. Hanging on to these gender pressures is useless now since they keep us away from really knowing ourselves and eventually building real, honest relationships. Guys, the world doesn’t revolve around your dick anymore. You are not the victim because women can now decide to live freely – the privileged ones, that is.
Love is not a power game. It’s about letting go of your ego to be able to build yourself for who you really are and being able to really be there for someone and understand whatever they feel is valid.
I think Noe managed to depict what men and women today often go through, in this time of confusing transition. It’s also a really good source of inspiration if you want to make porn deeper – emotionally, I mean…
I would love to know your take on the film if you’ve seen!
