When Love came out, I didn't hear about it. I think after 5 or 6 years hearing nothing from Gaspar Noe, I likely googled him at one point in 2015 and found out Love existed. If memory serves, I then looked up the film, and found it streaming. I put it on immediately, which happened to be around 11pm, and I watched all of it until the wee early hours of the morning.
Noe has the rare power to upstage all of his previous works at times, and he has rocketed to number one for me at multiple times. When I saw Irreversible I called it my favorite film of all time. Then Enter the Void came out and I called that my favorite. Then Love came out and I called that my favorite. It has reverted back to Enter the Void since then, and on rewatch it remains Enter the Void, so what is Love?
Love stars actors Noe found in the club scene. He likely had conversations with them very much like the ones seen in the film Love, where Karl Glusman plays a film director who wants to make a movie out of "semen and blood." The plot involved him and his girlfriend having a threesome which then leads to him having solo sex with the third girl, getting her pregnant, and her having his child. Then, in flashback, we reveal his relationship with his girlfriend Electra while he spins from the revelatory news that she has recently gone missing.
This hit me hard initially because I was in a relationship which felt like it had hit a real rough patch. I split up with my wife maybe 4-5 months after watching this movie. The darkness of the internal dialogue, the bleakness of the future the main character has, the cruelty of love turned into hurt turned into hate turned into revenge and with smatterings of love still mixed into all of those felt extremely relatable.
On rewatch, it does feel a little unfocused. Noe chased a gimmick here, filming the movie in 3D for the purpose of showing the graphic sex in a new way. About 50% of the movie is graphic sex, depicting real penetration and sitting in it visually. Then the other 50% is these memories and these moments. We see how the three-way happened and how it went awry, and we see the relationship dynamics of Murphy and Electra and as the film goes we dive into their dysfunctional relationship.
Love still represents extremely well some of the depths and highs of a relationship. It still is darkly comedic in certain parts. It leaves you with questions and feelings, and in no way is it trying to cover all your bases. There is motif of rain present in the entire movie, which I only picked up on this time. The atmosphere is quite high here, and the sex is really hot.
Another thought about it, I believe Love represents a specific time in our lives we hopefully grow out of. A time when we are making mistakes and when we are obsessed with our first loves. How we can hurt the people closest to us when we are young because of that childhood remnant of selfishness and or lack of familiarity with compromise and sacrifice. This all felt way more familiar to me when I was 10 years younger when this came out, less so now. Not that it makes the movie worse, if anything it makes it better, because Noe is older than me.
Overall, this film is really powerful, but its definitely not better than Enter the Void. It's part of a dynamic shift in Noe which follows into Vortex very much, with Climax being a slight deviation. Love is a great film and great statement, and everyone should see it.
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