Love 3D (2015)

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thewire
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Love 3D (2015)

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There are many movies that contain what people call explicit genuine sex scenes and ones that show simulated sex. Both can be exciting. What’s important isn’t whether it’s real sex or simulated but what emotion it transports. And I don’t think there are so many movies that transport sex as a real passion. - Gaspar Noé

And so goes Argentinian French visionary Gaspar Noé’s newest cinematic experiment, Love 3D. Far more about sentimentality than eroticism, Love is a film that prefers to evoke a memory of a long lost lover than arouse the participant viewer. Of course, the presentation of unsimulated sex never goes without controversy, and given the 3D nature of the film, there are certain moments when Noé appears to be more provocateur than photographer. Yet the 3D – while used for gimmick in a couple of obviously comedic moments – serves as a medium of enhanced intimacy rather than popcorn extravagance. Noé wishes to and achieves in placing the viewer in the bedroom with his forlorn lovers.

Utilizing a fractured narrative, the film follows American cinema student, Murphy (Karl Glusman), as he studies in Paris and falls for aspiring artist and party animal, Electra (Aomi Muyock). The two embark upon a one night stand that evolves into a passionate love affair. Considering the couple’s drug intake and playful infidelity, all seems well – until the arrival of neighbor, Omi (Klara Kristin). Following a threesome flawlessly set to Funkadelic’s “Maggot Brain,” Murphy and Electra begin to drift until an irreversible event ruptures their tender love for each other. A year or so later, we witness Murphy – now fathering a child with Omi – reflect upon his relationship with Electra through opium induced dreams and memories.

Photographed in signature Noé fashion, collaborator and cinematographer Benoît Debie creates a Paris consumed with mood lighting. Given that 3D darkens color, Love is a depressed film whose presentation of passion illuminates the dimmest bedrooms, hallways, and night clubs. As previously stated, the 3D in play is one previously unfound. Just as Godard gave us iPhones, philosophizing men on the toilet, and a dog wandering a beach in his Goodbye to Language 3D, Noé has utilized the mainstream technique as a new art-house medium for immersing an audience with their subjects. Exceeding the role of voyeur, the audience is as much a participant as Omi or any other character that comes into contact with the fatalistic lovers.

Most interesting about Love, is the connections it makes to the previous entrants of Noé’s filmography. The seemingly never ending frenetic and hate-filled inner monologue of I Stand Alone is subdued to casual whispers and reflections. The unforgettable hallway from Irreversible is subverted as Murphy and Electra find their own hallway of deepened reds in which they make love. And finally, the inclusion of Enter the Void’s “Love Hotel” as well as a recreation of the shocking image of a penis penetrating a vagina (from the viewpoint of inside the vagina). However, this shot is brought to even greater heights in Love with a consummation that posits this film as both a cinematic and analytic culmination of Noé’s career thus far.

Meaning that, the pervasive reverse shots of Murphy as well as the seeming comfort he finds in neon and accent lit environments, posits him as the potential reincarnation of Enter the Void’s Oscar (Nathaniel Brown). While this is certainly a shot in the dark, it is through the aforementioned that Love feels very much like the cinematic bridge between Noé’s past as well as what his future – in filmmaking – may bring. Without a doubt Noé’s most personal and deeply felt film thus far, the inclusion of characters named Gaspar (Ugo Fox) and Noé (a suspect "Aaron Pages") appear of little coincidence.

As reserved as it is – quite literally at times – in your face, Love intersperses Noé’s typical erratic and violent behavior(s) for brief moments rather than profiling them at large. Love is the first of Noé’s features where the climax isn’t influenced by hate, bigotry, and/or misogyny, but rather love, sentimentality, honesty, and passion. This subversion may not seem like much, but in the oeuvre of Noé, it is a profound change of pace that works. While some have criticized the film as a tedious experiment, it is through the lengthy sexual encounters that truth is found. As seen in the films of Béla Tarr, the inclusion of the elongated tracking shot provides spatial and temporal awareness that elicits honesty in the film.

Poignant and timeless in its portrayal of sentimentality, the ill-fated characters of Love are ones that may not always warrant sympathy, but are wonderfully human all the more because of it. In fact, it is a rarity to find characters that are written so honestly. Explosive in every aspect, Love is rife with broken figures that may think they know passion, yet once introduced to do it are never the same. An orgy of heated and heartbreaking imagery, Gaspar Noé’s Love is an experiment that works amazingly, and is above all, a rewriting of the possibilities of sex within cinema.

For more reviews, Cryptic Celluloid.

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