Love : Movie Review



Title: LOVE
Director: Gaspar Noé
Starring: Karl Glusman, Aomi Muyock, Klara Kristin
Length: 135 minutes
Certificate: 18

Murphy (Karl Glusman) is an American in Europe. We are granted access into Murphy life and thoughts as we listen to his inner monologue. Unfortunately it's a look into mind of a loser. Into the mind of a guy who knows he's a loser. He smokes weed and takes drugs. In a flashback we see him accidentally get Omi (Klara Kristin) pregnant who he ends up in a bored relationship with later in the film. However as the timeline of film isn’t exactly linear it can be confusing at points, with only Murphy’s bum-fluff moustache (sometimes there, sometimes not)to denote the passage of time.

Love (2015) - Movie PosterThe question viewers will be asking throughout the film, and be left with at the end, is how can Murphy get one woman, let alone two - at the same time?

It's a story written by a man about men's fantasies and even when Murphy asks Omi what her fantasy is, it ends up being the most vanilla man-pleasing fantasy possible: one guy, two women with Electra (Aomi Muyock) being invited into their bed. How can that be the fantasy of a girl? Surely most girls would want two men satisfying them?

Murphy moans and whinges, both in his own mind, and on screen. He treats the women badly and verbally abuses them.And spends a good deal of the earlier sex scenes masturbating himself when he could be having sex with a woman. The sex scenes are frequent but fairly tame and somewhat pointless, at least until mid way through when the couple push their sexual boundaries trying out sex with a third person who is a transsexual and later taking part in an orgy. But the sex scenes that could be either boundary pushing, tender, or sensual are just trashy and tacky.

What does Gaspar Noe think that he is offering us that we haven't already seen in similar 'real-sex' films such as Michael Winterbottom's 9 Songs? His direction is nothing special and regular cuts suggest that the film was heavily edited and/or that the actors required several takes to get things right - and that’s the dialogue - not the sex. The standard of the acting is poor and but perhaps it’s the script that gives them little with which to work?

There is a nice scene when Murphy and Electra go to a secluded spot near some caves and a waterfall but this is cut short before they have sex in what would have been an exciting and interesting location, Noe apparently preferring his characters to stick to bedroom sex.

Long before the end of this film and even during the scenes that are no doubt intended to be most titillating I’d lost interest and my wife was complaining that the bedsheets on display in the film were dirty or crumpled - before the sex!

In short Love has lots of boobies, muff and penis on display but not much else to offer. And certainly no actual Love.

Author : Kevin Stanley