While the Music Box isn’t showing Gaspar Noé’s newest provocation in its intended 3D, the sex act and concomitant fluids are still going to be in your face in “Love.” The simpler, more elemental Noé’s films become, the more touching they are, especially in this puppyish idyll of fucking as everyday transcendence, rather than transgression. Noé’s sweet heart melts on screen without the vibrant visual innovation of “Enter The Void” or the brutal punishing-of-the-innocent of “Irreversible.” To establish his bona fides of fuckery, “Love” opens with film-loving American boy and French artist girl touching each other to completion. Boy; girl; another girl. Noé is willing to literally come in your face, but not in a boy; girl; another boy configuration. Still, it’s much more than what festival reviewers had seen as simply come-and-go. With Karl Glusman, Klara Kristin, Aomi Muyock. 138m. (Ray Pride)
Ray Pride is Newcity’s Senior Editor and Film Critic. He is a contributing editor of Filmmaker magazine.
Ray’s history of Chicago Ghost Signs is planned for publication next year. Previews of the project are on Twitter and on Instagram. More photography on Instagram.
Locust Cannibal Love And The Unrequited Flame: Emerald Fennell On "Saltburn" "I wanted to make a film about love," Fennell writes. "More specifically, the kind of locust, scorched-earth, cannibal love that you feel at a certain age. It’s the age when you finally get to be an adult, where you’re making yourself, where you get to be someone, or hope to be."
