Warning: The content described in this review is only suitable for people 18 years or older. Reader discretion is advised.
Controversial filmmaker Gaspar Noé (Enter the Void) mixes romantic drama with explicit sex in Love. Murphy (Karl Glusman) is an American film student, who begins an extremely passionate relationship with Parisian artist Electra (Aomi Muyock). Featuring a disjointed narrative that moves back and forth through time, Murphy reminisces of his time with the women whom he considers to be the major love of his life.
Love is a romantic-drama, which is built around the gimmick of extremely explicit unsimulated sex. While this is far from the first art film to do this, with previous examples being Catherine Breillat's Romance, John Cameron Mitchell's Shortbus, and even last year's Nymphomaniac, Love is a film that really blurs the line between artistic depictions of sex to being full on pornography. The fact that the film begins with a full view (and 3D) shot of Electra masturbating Murphy is a prime example of this.
While it can be easy to write-off Love purely for its explicit use of sex, the film also portrays a very tender romance between Murphy and Electra, which is essentially shown backwards from their break-up to first meeting. The problem is that as the romance gets more loving, the sex ironically gets more darker and pornographic. With a lengthy threesome scene and 3D ejaculation among the film's shocking content, it can be said that Love is a romance about sex that has way too much of it.
★ ★ ★ | WATCHABLE
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