Love – Film Review by Frank L.

Directed by Gaspar Noé
Writer: Gaspar Noé
Stars: Aomi Muyock, Karl Glusman, Klara Kristin

The centre piece of this film is the portrayal of actual sexual conjugation on the screen. It is a taboo broken in commercial cinema. The usually hidden parts of the body are shown. The story is not complex; Murphy, an American in Paris, falls in love with Elektra, a young Parisian. She goes away for a weekend and in his apartment he espies his next door neighbour a young nubile blonde. His manhood gets the better of him and they have sex.

The film starts with Murphy being woken on New Year’s day by a kid crying. He then has various flashbacks about his life since meeting Elektra. She has now disappeared from his life and also from the life of her mother who telephones him out of the blue in the hope that he may know where she is. He obviously still loves her as the flashbacks are all about her and his having sex with her and, of course, their rows. The two are inextricably interwoven. His flashbacks are heightened by a little pill which Elektra had given him before she departed and which he has kept carefully.

The two hours and five minutes of the film are all about Murphy’s reminiscing about his erotic love for Elektra. No matter how close up or beautifully the male and female genitalia is shot it is not sufficient to replace the almost complete lack of story line. A clue as to what the story line may be is that the kid is named by Murphy, “Gaspar”, which of course is the same first name as the director Gaspar Noé.

It is beautifully made but is that enough even if it is breaking the taboo of actual sex being shown on the commercial cinema screen. A more substantive story line would assist.