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 film critic and a contributing editor to Filmmaker magazine.
His multimedia history of Chicago “Ghost Signs” will be published soon. Previews of the project are on Twitter and on Instagram as Ghost Signs Chicago. More photography on Instagram.
