Who cares if it's art?
Posted: Fri May 22, 2015 1:31 am
The Cannes Film Festival got its first taste of full-blown controversy after a late-night session with director Gaspar Noe's hyper-sexual 3D tale Love.
The explicit movie tells the story of a young couple's tempestuous love affair, featuring over a dozen extremely graphic sex scenes, including close-up ejaculations, orgies, a threesome and a transvestite prostitute. The posters had already given Love plenty of notoriety ahead of its premiere on the French Riviera, with one featuring a post-climax penis. Such large crowds showed up for the midnight screening that dozens of ticket-holders had to be turned away and arguments broke out outside the Grand Palais theatre.
"For years, I have dreamed of making a film that would fully reproduce the passion of a young couple in love, in all its physical and emotional excesses," Noe said in a statement ahead of the screening. The audience gave a long standing ovation at the end of the film, but many critics seemed unconvinced by Noe's "blood, sperm and tears" vision. "Like bad sex, (it) seems to go on forever with no climax or ending in sight," tweeted Sophie Kaufman, of Little White Lies magazine.
The Argentinian director, who lives and works in France, said he wanted to transcend "the ridiculous division that dictates no normal film can contain overtly erotic scenes, even though everyone loves to make love". "I felt that 3D would allow the viewer a greater sense of identification with the lead character and his nostalgic state," he said. BBC film critic Jason Solomons said it "was definitely not a porn film – the dialogue's not up to that level".
It is not yet clear if the film will remain uncensored. Love sold distribution rights in the US on Friday, but it could yet fall foul of censors. "We will do everything we can to protect this masterful film," Brooke Forde, of US distributor Alchemy, told The Hollywood Reporter.
