Gaspar Noé's LOVE 3D -- NSFW, promise you

Started by jenkins, April 27, 2015, 03:11:01 PM

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wilder

Quote from: jenkins<3 on November 10, 2015, 02:02:12 AM
i still have not seen this movie and continue to operate in a theoretical realm.

I'll respond to a few things but yeah let's save this conversation for later...

Quoteexcept for those rare few who are born blessed, when does a person learn about love and what love means? when in high school, or around then or whenever, did you tell another person you loved them? then as the days went on, if you did not marry this person, if there was a break up, after the break up would you say you told the person a misnomer? perhaps, or perhaps you'd say the word was valid, that you did love the person, but you were young and you did not know how to love.

If the movie were operating from that perspective it'd be fine, but I don't think it is. And I don't think you learn about love until you're really in it, at least I didn't. Having been in love, this did not seem like love to me.

Quotei wouldn't expect or want Noe to portray an ideal love happening through youth. that's not the lives most people lead.

Love is never ideal and always messy. But I still don't see love in Love.

Quotethere's a kind of parallel, between you seeing this movie and carrying with you your ideal of love and wanting to find it but not, and the character saying love but his actions not finding meaning. he's on the screen and you're on the seat, that's all.

You're assuming I'm carrying in some concept of 'ideal love' with me, which I'm not. If anything from my own point of view love definitely brings pain.

jenkins

#31
i need to learn the framing device

wilder

Quote from: jenkins<3i need to learn the framing device.

Mild spoilers

The film utilizes a flashback/flash-forward structure, implying a certain relationship is definitely love. That's basically it.

Edit - shit jenk I accidentally edited your post instead of replying. Apologies. Maybe admins can undo this?

Jeremy Blackman

Quote from: wilder on November 10, 2015, 02:40:21 AMEdit - shit jenk I accidentally edited your post instead of replying. Apologies. Maybe admins can undo this?

There's no way to undo it. I have definitely done that at least a few times. Stupid modify button is right next to the quote button.

Gold Trumpet

SPOILERS


I think something missing in this discussion is the concept of love Noe is even talking about. In interviews, he distances himself from a lot of the content of the film and says it speaks to ideas of his past. Things he not only experienced but situations and perspectives he feels distant from. The couple is narcissistic and the protagonist is certainly riddled with problems. Even when he's looking back and lamenting on what he lost, he's bitten by anger and anxiety that doesn't feel matured. He still has issues and can't appreciate what he has. If he had to timeline the actual distance from when he was last with Electra, it can't be more than 2-4 years (given the age of his child). Wouldn't he still be in his likely 20s? I think a lot of the film is the frustrations of being in love when you're younger and what you feel is more passionate than dedicated. Murphy proudly pronounces his ambition in film like any idealist but he doesn't seem too removed (time wise) from that situation.

More to the point, I think Love is about the concept of a broken version of it (I kept thinking about someone telling me relationships can be good, but never pleasant) and how a couple tries to break through their problems by devolving their relationship to dares of sexual lust and how a simple mistake (impregnating another girl) forever fractures what they had. Having children with Electra is what Murphy seemingly wanted, but it happened with the wrong person. Did it really happen with the wrong person? Would Murphy had been different with Electra? Who knows, because the audience has to tunnel vision their experience and information based on what Murphy says and remembers. He's trying to come to terms at the end, but he's too fractured to really do so. It's the point of first person perspective. It isn't suppose to be about clear ideas and the vagueness of the title certainly makes it apt for criticism, but for Murphy (our sole real entity in the film), this idea of Love is all he knows and may ever know. We don't know. But Noe always likes to delve into mindsets and worlds and keep the audience away from the happy distance of third person storytelling. He always wants disruption and everyone sitting in the first row for it.

wilder

SPOILERS

Quote from: Gold Trumpet on November 10, 2015, 06:43:56 PM
a lot of the film is the frustrations of being in love when you're younger and what you feel is more passionate than dedicated.

I like your angle on this, but disagree about the source of the feelings...

Quote from: Gold Trumpet on November 10, 2015, 06:43:56 PMWould Murphy have been different with Electra?

This is a great question, maybe the key question, but I think we see evidence of the eventuality of their relationship in many scenes. At the party, Murphy fucks another girl in the bathroom right under the nose of his girlfriend, then lies about it to her face. Later, in the sex club, she has to physically pull him away from another girl and force him to be with her. The end result of this scene is a sort of test of Murphy, when Electra is pleasuring another guy while Murphy pleasures her. And then he blows up in the car about it. Murphy previously wanted an open relationship and was cool to go through with it in f-m-f terms, but when it came to Electra's pleasure he backpedaled. He wants possession without dedication but has a double-standard when she eventually turns the tables on him and proposes a m-f-m three-way. The difference in Murphy's relationship with Electra is only that he doesn't have chains (a baby) committing him to her, and that frees him in a way that deludes him into believing it's love. This makes total psychological sense, but it's also an example of Murphy being misogynistic and never putting Electra first. Electra's feelings are always an afterthought for him. Only when he's personally affected in a negative way that could get him in trouble does he think of her. If one of the defining features of love is selflessness, then Murphy fails on all fronts. He was never in it at all.

Quote from: Gold Trumpet on November 10, 2015, 06:43:56 PMHe's trying to come to terms at the end, but he's too fractured to really do so. It's the point of first person perspective. [...] Noe always likes to delve into mindsets and worlds and keep the audience away from the happy distance of third person storytelling.

I'm with you there, but if the movie is trying to put us in Murphy's shoes then we should also feel the love he thinks he has. And I'm also not convinced the movie is entirely first-person perspective free from any comment the structure imposes.

jenkins

just realized, oh, it played twice in three days at the Aero, once at Ace, and i think that might've been it, and i missed this...

wilder


jenkins

i'm going to miss those too... you know what i'm doing today wilder... omg that reminds me btw... but thanks for telling me and it gives me hope for seeing it in my future.

to summarize the situation: this movie was made for 3d, but 3d screens across the city are filled by movies that make money, there's like an inverse correlation between this movie's excitement factor and its money potential, so my best hope is that people like it enough to bring it around to more 2d screens, but basically i already missed the boat on seeing this movie the way it was intended to be seen, since i thought it'd keep playing and playing at the Aero when i imagined.

Garam

I bailed from this after 70 minutes. Fucking horrendous. Reminded me of To the Wonder the most in that it's such a self-parody of the auteur's style and id that it feels like it was penned by a spiteful enemy. Genuinely embarassing. I almost cringed myself inside out at the 'Gaspar' and 'Noe' naming references. Avoid. Hate.

WorldForgot

About , Stephin Merritt told The Independent --
"69 Love Songs is not remotely an album about love, it's an album about love songs, which are very far away from anything to do with love."

I'm very interested by wilder's perspective that this film is not about Love. Obviously the expression or pov on Love is subjective. Isn't it? I'm not certain, but maybe even Noe would agree that this is not a film about love but about love-acts. Love-lies, love-distortions, love-mistook. I don't think wilder iz off-base to say this is about infatuation and lust, and perhaps they're branches off the same trunk for Noe.

We can fall in love with liminal distance between what we want and what we've got...

Wanted to include Merritt's quote, the album, and this poem from Elaine Kahn's Romance or the End.

QuoteTHERE IS NOTHING MORE TO LIFE THAN THIS
Sickness
is a kind of clarity

It makes you feel afraid
and love to be alive

It interests me
to be afraid

My claim is on the absolute

I never wanted
to be free

Only to be
nothing

And to love
to be alive

Just like the French
my beauty’s nourished

by its own disgrace
I love
when it’s disgusting

Jealously
I wash myself

The sacrament of being
held without affection

My only purity
is in my failure
to be satisfied

We will never comprehend this
nor what hinders you

The horror I confess

I cannot have you
without being
and you know what I’d prefer