Love

2015 avant-porn

Rating: 5/20

Plot: Threesome fantasies turn into betrayal for a prospective American filmmaker and his French girlfriend.

Not seeing this in 3D, I feel that I probably missed the full effect of this avant-porn film from Gaspar Noe, a director who is either a lot smarter than me or who has completely lost his mind. I'm not sure if the 3D would have enhanced the jism shots directly into the viewer's lap or the sex scene from a prospective within a woman's vagina. Or an intense finger-point from Mr. Noe himself, who I suspect only put himself in a minor role in this so that he could give himself a brief sex scene.

No amount of 3D could have saved the acting which is unbelievably bad. The threadbare story and an embarrassingly whiny screenplay don't really help the performers out much, but they're really awful when they're not having sex with each other. The protagonist, who unfortunately is in nearly every frame of this movie, is played by Karl Glusman, and he's not really good at conveying any emotion or state of mind other than lukewarm perplexity. Giving Glusman lines was a huge mistake, but letting his thoughts be heard through voiceovers was an even worse one. The girlfriend is played by Aomi Muyock, and neither my ear or the subtitles seemed to know what she was saying part of the time. As a character, she's almost as interesting as a day-old baguette. Noe is also really bad, maybe just a notch above somebody like Tommy Wiseau. It's hard to imagine that he could watch dailies, see the job he's doing on screen, and think to himself that he's really nailing it here.

The opening shot is sex, and there's sex peppered throughout the thing. It's so much that I actually got bored with sex, something that almost never happens. The sex is filmed nice, succeeding in making it at least look like art rather than just straight porn, and we can probably thank cinematographer Benoit Debie for that. The film frequently looks good even if it's dull and silly.

Despite being shown something that I've never seen before, this is not something that I'd ever recommend to anybody. I do imagine my experience isn't much different than those early film audiences who freaked out seeing a train on screen for the first time.