Love: Hurawatch

Love: Hurawatch

Blog Article

At some point in Gaspar Noé's "Love," a racy depiction of romance, a ‘drama about being inside your head,’ a young man in infatuation, Murphy (Karl Glusman), says: “I’m inside my head.” The way in which Murphy (Aomi Muyock) becomes the object of his desire is presented unsentimentally in a flashback format, as a reflection of Murphy’s current feelings. However, as every viewer knows, ovals are the easiest shapes for the human brain to conceptualize, which explains why Murphy’s reminiscences are intended to be viewed as womb-like sanctuaries. The first thing that strikes viewers about Murphy, in the present, is his unflattering demeanor, which reveals itself immediately via petulant sulking and a voice that is void of emotion and expression: the detached voiceover narration. He does appear to be occupied with his romantic thoughts about Electra, but it is equally clear that he is a spoiled child who shifts the responsibility for his marriage’s utter lack of intimacy to his wife, Omi (Klara Kristin). As the title suggests, ‘Love,’ depicts the lifeless contemplation of a sexual connection from the standpoint of a relationship the partners are wholly disengaged from, emotionally and otherwise. Imagine a time travel film but, in all honesty, with profoundly sad young people you’d probably avoid in reality.

In “Love,” Murphy undergoes what can best be described as a revived existence, reliving his memories while lacking control over his emotions. As a result, his memories are jumbled and, out of order.

Murphy recalls very Electra vividly and pityingly as an oasis with a makeshift gismol in the sea of despair that is in silent agony with Omi as his life partner, all because her mother calls him. However, as we dive deeper into the past with Omi, already married, we can see how her relationship with Murphy underwent some paradoxical changes due to the presence of Electra. The relationship they had with each other was as inter with Murphy can be described as a film stu coexisting in a tangential traffic jam of erotic art and literature. Full of posters of 'Saló' and ‘Story of O’, diogenically gathering dust in his room, cumulatively served to create that mindset meshed with sheer jealousy. Eventually though, she does let it slip out that she is much more worried about being caged than she is about becoming a famous painter. Both being slowly destructed by tremendous sexual desires they fail to master vent their frustrations by unleashed bound shackled violent passions that penetrated it like whip through the wind, gentle but tormenting, leaving holes through the layers that roared with eruption wild cacophony of sex unlike any other: calm, hot, and cruelly dehumanizing. So when we hear Electra charging like a raging bull, guns blazing upon Murphy claiming that the bastard has no conception of love is what makes them love him. In fact, loving so this became an odyssey through the fictitious world where decline acceleration immersed in chaos was order becomes boundless.

Read More Movies on Hurawatch

 

Noé (“Enter the Void,” “Irreversible“) seeks to steep viewers in Murphy’s mixed emotions, so the experience of watching “Love” can oftentimes be more trying than pondering its meaning while watching the movie. Through disconnecting “Love” from the concept of the film’s title, it starts working in a sense that you have to view it as a paradoxically over-determined work of and about sensuality. “Love” is shaped by Noé’s 3-D photography stylings, but he constantly reminds viewers that they exist outside of the frame, such is the case in one shot where an erect penis aims at the camera, thrusts, and CGI semen is projected straight at the lens. The combination of an elliptical–and sparse–structure sutured with a monotonous, droning score, and mid-scene black-out cuts makes it an impossible undertaking to attempt to forget that you are, in fact, watching a film. This is also reinforced by the main character, Murphy, existing as a reheated version of one of Noé’s blank-slate protagonists, which results in one contemplating why a person like this is plopped in front of you.

Initially conceited, Murphy is utterly clueless, as evident through “What’s the meaning of life?” at his first encounter with Electra, only to be met by the equally blabbering, “Love” as a response. It is a clear testament to the things he desperately wants to evade. As clear from his extensive use of reddish-brown camera filters, capturing b-roll is not a desire, but an obligation for Noé—never enough for an edit, but too much for one’s sanity.

“Love” centers around an angry character who seems to want to make a “sentimental” romance featuring sex but is (as expected) incapable of romancing and seeing outside of himself.

What is it like to extract a sympathetic feeling while watching “Love”? It’s a film where amateur performers engaging in unsimulated sex on camera—planned for in every instance—strives instead to elicit a bond of alienation sympathy with Murphy. This might sound like Noé aims for something elusive and fails. He makes an emotional impact using first-time actors to elicit complex emotions. But he builds a complex relationship throughout the film with Murphy that is more eloquent and uninterrupted than the putrid line delivery from the film’s three leads. By the end, you find some connection to Murphy regardless of his hollow monologues.

The lovemaking in Noé’s films is as troubling restrained, anguished, and scarily graphic as the love scenes. But they are not just mindless slogging endurance tests either. Noé conspicuously attempts to capture the essence of what draws his youthful characters to each other and shows you. In that regard, his unapologetic objectification of the bodies he casts can be beguiling.

When observing bodies in action, we can break them down to a singular part, and a person attempting to get lost in another for the sake of pleasure that will always be evasive to those not perceiving it. Love, even if not relished, has an enduring impression on the heart.