Love
2015 · Directed by Gaspar Noé
Original language: French
- drama
- romance
The story
Murphy is an American living in Paris who enters a highly sexually and emotionally charged relationship with the unstable Electra. Unaware of the seismic effect it will have on their relationship, they invite their pretty neighbor into their bed.
What it’s like
Saturated primary reds, blues and sickly neon greens bleed through a Paris apartment in a palette that feels hot, overlit and slightly feverish, with the camera often floating at eye level or drifting close over bodies in long, unbroken takes. Much of the image is shot in dim rooms lit by a single lamp, a bedside glow or a flickering television, so the grain looks thick and the edges soft, like memory recovered from a shoebox of prints. The sound design leans on pulsing electronic music, murmured French, sudden silences and heavy breathing, creating an atmosphere that is intimate and disorienting at once. Its vibe is sultry, melancholic and restless, a late-night slide into longing and regret best suited to sitting alone with the lights off. The pacing is slow and immersive, and the emotional register swings between tenderness, jealousy and grief as a young man keeps chasing a bond he can't hold. Sexual content is explicit and frequent, with graphic nudity and unsimulated sex throughout, and there is some drug use and a pregnancy-related plot thread that turns painful. It is not gentle, and it is for viewers who want an unflinching, sensory study of desire and its wreckage.
More films like Love
Closest in mood, pacing and theme. Tell us why you loved Loveand we’ll explain which ones fit you.
