Three minutes of mutual masturbation between Murphy and Electra serves as a kind of narrative foreplay for the fetishist flashback that is LOVE, Gaspar Noe’s explicit epic of ennui.
Murphy (Karl Glusman) and Electra (Aomi Muyock) were lovers until Murphy impregnated Omi (Klara Kristin), the result of a broken condom. Omi had been bedded by both in a menage a trois but a takes two to tango tryst is an affronting betrayal and Electra becomes a mourner, morbidly jealous, suicidal.
So when her mother phones Murphy on New Year’s Day to tell him she has not heard from her daughter in a while and fears for her safety, Murphy frets up a flashback to tell the whole sorry story.
Murphy is a budding filmmaker and he wants to make sensual movies. Sentimental sexuality is the term he uses and espouses that it isn’t in movies either at all or not enough. He means emotionally but the tactile is part of emotion, especially love.
Like the thin line between pleasure and pain, sanity and madness, there’s not much between romantic love and lust.
The euphoria, the ecstasy, the expectation, the execution, the ejaculations. Responsibility is not present, abandonment prevails.
Scenes of penetrative sex, fellatio and more have seen LOVE labelled pornography.
Noe has always liked to push the envelope, like the notorious IRREVERSIBLE, and LOVE is no exception. He likes to shock and it is expected of him. He has delivered with LOVE, but the real shock is the self deprecating prophecy which comes to pass.
Murphy is a self absorbed bore, with endless monologues, and harbours a barely disguised resentment to his unplanned parenthood. His career has been curtailed and that is a blessing for one cannot help think his movies would be mawkish and over-long, a bit like LOVE.
Phallus centric and homophobic, LOVE plays to the mainstream mental status that males like Murphy, and there are many, are programmed with.
In that regard, LOVE is a trenchantly honest movie, and with all the florid philosophising and pinioned opinionated palaver, the veracity is voracious.
A quarter hour too long – like most mainstream movies these days – but infinitely more arresting and interesting than most movies these days.
Enjoy LOVE in the privacy of your own home. Gaspar Noe’s film was released on DVD and Blue Ray on 18th November.