LOVE (Gaspar Noé, 2015)
"Love" is the latest film from France-based Argentinian filmmaker and provocateur Gaspar Noé, and surprisingly, it is also his tamest, despite the slew of onscreen full-frontal nudity and overlong hardcore sex scenes. Told in a non-linear fashion similar to Noé's previous films, "Love" tells of American film student named Murphy (Karl Glusman), who is torn between the love of his life, Electra (Aomi Muyock) and the mother of his child, Omi (Klara Kristin). The story unfolds as if an ambivalent surge of memory; Murphy recalls the good and the bad, but for the most part, the unrelenting sex. In one scene, Murphy questions why no one has ever depicted "sentimental sexuality" on film, which is Noé trying to state the obvious. "Love" succeeds when it strips down its main character of his pretensions; it fails when Noé has to justify the film's reason for being, which he does so a number of times during the film's 135-minute ru...