Gaspar Noe's Love is set to hit Cannes 2015.
When
we think of 3D cinema, we’re generally pressed to label the trend of upselling
customers as little more than a gimmick.
When we think of porn, there’s little left to the imagination. Stick 3D and porn together and you’ll have a
mixed reaction somewhere between awkward laughter and odd titillation. If, however, you have a name like Gaspar Noe
involved in it, you already know it’s going to be an intense cinematic journey
the likes of which you’ve never seen or heard in a theater before.
Around 2009 when French provocateur Gaspar
Noe was doing Cannes press conferences and Q&As for his explicit
psychedelic drama of the afterlife Enter
the Void, the new bad boy of Cannes second to Lars Von Trier hinted at
making a 3D porno that would be “joyful” and thus “bring the sex right into
your lap”. Not unlike Paul Thomas
Anderson’s announcement that Punch-Drunk
Love would be an Adam Sandler comedy, Noe’s proclamation at first seemed
like jokey wishful thinking. With a
running time of over three hours eclipsing the already enormous running time of
two-and-a-half hours of his last feature, the fourth film of Gaspar Noe
entitled Love was officially entered
into 2015’s Cannes Film Festival for a midnight screening.
According to Noe, his latest shocker is
designed to “give guys a hard on and make girls cry”. While hyperbolic in description as usual, Noe
says the storyline itself isn’t anything that hasn’t been seen before but in
terms of technique, he “will be taking it up a notch”. Given the incredible camera movement and
visual design of Enter the Void and
his subsequent PSA and music video work, for him to proclaim he intends to
outdo himself visually, porno or not, is pretty exciting news. Will it be indulgent and excessive in the
ways we’ve come to expect from Gaspar Noe?
Probably. Will Love serve up the explicit sexual
content Noe’s become infamous for?
Absolutely. The real question
will be, however, does this latest purely cinematic provocation stand tall
alongside the French auteur’s already formidable filmography? While it remains to be seen, new Noe work is
almost always worth the anticipation behind it.
-Andrew Kotwicki