Saturday 21 November 2015

Love

Love by Gaspar Noe  English film from France - 2015

Gasper Noe broke my heart with his classic Irreversible, when he let 'my' beautiful Monica Bellucci to be violently raped for more than 15 minutes on screen. Irreversible was brilliant cinema from this Argentinian director, and it was path breaking in its cinematic language and technique and what not. Ever since Love released, I wanted to watch it and this has been a long long wait to get a copy, while I had to listen to all sorts of reviews and comments about it. Most in the English world called it porn cinema or artistic porn or pretentious cinema and so on, but elsewhere the world looked at it differently. Finally, my lady too talked about it as beautiful cinema, and I couldn't wait any more. I got the copy yesterday and to be very frank, I was a little bit disappointed. This could be because my expectations were so high or because of the director himself and the so many varied opinions including my wife's. 

Like in En La Cama, the Chilean movie, Love starts with sex. For most of the first half of the cinema, I was kind of disappointed and had so many questions. Is this really Gaspar Noe. Why did he have to make this movie in English, why did this hero had to be American. What is wrong with the love making scenes, which for some reason lacked genuine passion and so on.

Love is about an American man falling in love with a French girl, in Paris, but has to live with another girl because he got her pregnant. 

Mr. Noe hasn't forgotten his Irreversible style yet, the flashbacks works backwards in Love. I found the second half excellent and looking back, I must say, this cinema is another path breaker from Noe about relationship and love.

During the second half of the movie, a policeman is talking to the American and he says something in these lines -" You are in France now. Forget about your American feelings. Enjoy it, there are so many beautiful woman out there, go and enjoy with them and forget your possessive nature about your girlfriend, let her enjoy too. There are so many desires of hers which you may not be able to fulfill and vice versa. So trust each other and go out to a night club or sex club and enjoy your sexuality calmly with others as well. There is nothing wrong about it, feel your sexuality and fulfill your desires. As long as your girlfriend know that you are going to get back to her after (just) a sexual adventure, she will be fine and you should do the same to her too. Relax, dont be possessive".

For me, the whole essence of Love, is in these lines. I felt, Gaspar Noe wants to tell the conservative English world to not be possessive about sexuality and relationship. To look at the French and get inspired. To forget their orthodox views about sex and relationships and look at it with a more open mind. By all this he wants them to enjoy their love, sex and life even more.

Looking at it that way, I would say, Love is excellent. But I would also say, the scenes of sex lacked a kind of passion which I could feel, say in La Vie d' Adele. The raw sex scenes, all of them, in LVA looked like love making, while in Love, it looked simply like sex. I hope you get the difference. Love is not exceptionally great cinema, but it is definitely bold (even shows a nude trans gender!), non conformist, treats sex as normality, and have wonderful music and visuals which include raw sex. Acting, mostly, was average though and none of the actors had any kind of charm. I got answers to all my questions by the end of the movie, which is good.

I must say, it is possible that people who are not aware about the French ways, of openness to sexuality and relationships, might easily misunderstand this movie as porn cinema.

Finally, it is such a pity that most of my fellow Indians would never get to watch this movie. Indians need to watch it more than those in the conservative English world. Even if they lack the openness or passion for sex like the French, many in the West do not consider sex only as a means for child production. In India, vast majority strongly do believe in this medieval English rhetoric. This movie is intended for our (Indian) kind of population, where a couple in wedlock is taken for granted as enjoying healthy love life, irrespective of how much love and love-making remains in their relationship.