Review of Love (2015) by Tiberio S — 29 Nov 2017

Noe is bold and brash with his pornographic level of sexuality, but this is not to be confused with porn. Rather it is very telling of the strongest human emotions in ways other films aren't nearly as risqué. It's those finer details, the way light falls on parts of a leg that explore it's imperfections, cellulite and pubic hair mixed with muscle and shimmer, the positions we take with our partners getting into coitus, the unflattering hanging about of post-sex cuddling, yet the warmth we feel in our longing of the ex we exhibited every painful want of control over, every sexual anxiety either realized or imagined. The end shot says everything, leaves us in pain - I beg Noe not to torture me this way, but he persists to the last frame of the last credit, hued in red, in our blood.

Of course there are annoyances, signature of Noe in establishing his experimental style. Enter the Void established him as a voyeur living vicariously through his main character, and similar omnipotence is channeled here as the watchful eye who blinks between edits (or an unchanging shot), not playing any other character besides the one who watches the story unfolding. Maybe we could've done with a few less blinks, or a few less redundant sex scenes that over established the point of missing the bond we share with our ex, but on the whole I appreciate supplementing plot for experience. Though it gets boring at times, there's still something so deep and raw that you can feel. When his wife opens the door, but Electra steps in pregnant, with so little time left, we know there's no cure for his illness. The mystery of what's happened to her maintains; it was never about solving that case, but knowing why it existed. She said she'd kill herself if they didn't work out, maybe she did. These are the symptoms of what we call 'love' in America, so it's no coincidence it features an American with his foreign perception of being in the city of love Paris, and Noe inserts quotes around the word love, mocking the idea. This is obsession, addiction, a poisonous relationship that leads down dark paths which get lost to nowhere. He faces the consequences when he knocks up a girl they had initially wedged between them for a ménage a trois, Electra's ultimate fantasy; she's less a player than I would've thought.

It's interesting to identify where Noe places himself. They name their baby Gaspar, he sees himself as the creation of this illicit, loveless (or at least one-sided) affair. We do see that signature interior penetration cumshot as we move through the ayahuasca trip. Murphy is a filmmaker and named after Murphy's Law, the idea that anything can happen will, which we imagine when seeing the trailer, and which Noe delivers upon. Murphy also loves Kubrick's 2001, speaking to Noe's obsession with making the ultimate perceptual journey, almost too literally. There's another character named Noe, who I can't place, yet is more evidence of these horcruxes scattered in the film.