Review CXXIII - Love

Review 123
Love (2015)

Hey guys! I was all ready to rock 'n' roll with a couple of reviews before 2016, but unfortunately, I caught an absolutely awful gastro. Consequently, I only have an unedited review for you guys. I'll be sure to update it in 2016 and provide maybe a few more reviews before I return back to school. Happy New Year until then!

Ahh, 2015 is coming to a close, and I must say, it was a pretty shitty year. I guess I thought continuing my Gaspar Noé saga would be appropriate to thus close the New Year, not to mention he had a new film out this year. This one's called Love and it stars a bunch of random people you have never heard of in your life. Let's get to it!

Remember how much I hated Enter the Void? ... Yeah, I still desperately hate that movie, but Love somehow has less plot and makes less sense than Enter the Void. You'd think Gaspar Noé would up his game and maybe improve over time, but I guess he just gets worse. So why does Love suck such balls? Because it does just that: suck balls. That is, this is a freaking porn movie. An extra long porn movie with an attempt at culture, but it's porn nonetheless. We'll go from beginning to end with this shit fest, so strap in for a spoiler-induced review.

The film starts off with some announcement about putting on your 3D glasses. ... Okay. I'm not sure why this was included on my DVD copy of the movie, but whatever. What's the first scene? A man and woman jacking each other off. Great stuff. We get a full view of the woman, with the guy partially covered by the woman, although we still get a great shot of his dick. This lasts I think about three minutes. Then we cut to the same guy and a woman sleeping in the same bed. An alarm goes off... And then we get shitty, shitty monologue from the guy. This guy has a son, but immediately we're told that he feels "trapped" and a bunch of other shit typical of a guy that got a girl pregnant because he's a douche. Then he checks his voicemail after giving the baby to his mother, the woman he was laying in bed with. "Hello, this is Electra's mom. I haven't heard from her in two months - call me back," the message goes, with the woman possessing a thick French accent. Okay, before we go anywhere, let's point out the obviousness of the name Electra. Hm, that name is pretty uncommon... Could it be a reference to the Electra complex? Seems a bit stretched, but I think maybe it could be that. But don't worry, the obviousness continues when we see Murphy's law pop up and absorb the screen. "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong." Huh! Our protagonist's name is Murphy! I'm sure it's a coincidence, though. *rolls eyes* I love it when films take out any ambiguity from its depths so you walk away from the film without any questions. Well, I do have one: WHY AM I STILL WATCHING THIS?

We find out through a series of flashbacks that Murphy and Electra were going out and were so "madly in love". The two confess that sleeping with a blonde chick would up their relationship, and, oh look, the new neighbour is blonde and conveniently young (jailbait young)! After finding out she's pro-choice (plot anyone?) and enjoys smoking up (idiot anyone?), they invite her over. Ensue a threesome because everyone's a whore. However, one weekend when Electra's gone, Murphy goes over to the chick's house, has sex with her, but the condom breaks. And thus baby nine months later. But apparently Electra gets very angry and breaks up with him! Oh no :(( Electra, no :(( You're not that much of a whore :(( Anyway, so Murphy is furious, and tries to get her back, but it fails of course, and we cut back to present time. The film just jumps around, so I'll just discuss some scenes from here on out about the film that worth mentioning for rage.

Somewhere in the middle of the film - how I made it more than one minute in, I don't know - our lovely protagonist, Murphy, is talking to Electra and some whore at a party. "What is the number one goal in life?" he asks. The whore yells out, "Love!" Satisfied with the answer, Murphy then asks the second goal in life. "Sex!" the whore giggles, ready to pounce on his dee for no fathomable reason. Murphy excitedly agrees. "I want to make a film about sexual love. I've never seen a film like that!" As you can see, Gaspar Noé decided breaking-not-breaking the fourth wall would be a good idea, so we have Murphy basically telling us that this film is new, it's creative, it's grand. But I've also never seen a film focusing solely on decapitating babies, but does that mean it should exist? No. Not all ideas are good ideas, so I'm glad some freaking contemporary film student came out with some idea that hasn't been touched before. We're screwed. Anyway, that girl gets the dee from Murphy in the bathroom (why why why), but Electra finds out immediately as they are super loud about it, and, quite understandably, is super pissed off. Murphy claims she's sleeping with her ex (played by Gaspar Noé - he's damn short compared to Electra), and they argue in a taxi. "Calmez-vous!" the taxi driver tells them (it was bad acting). What follows is two aggressive sex scenes, one of them in a club. I don't know if they're connected, but to me, they're connected. I don't know when he says it, but Murphy claims his dick does not "think" and keeps "screwing things up". Apparently it does, but it doesn't because this guy CONTINUOUSLY CHEATS on his girlfriend and sex follows. Cheating is INEXCUSABLE. But this guy and film treat it as nothing. Sure, Electra gets pissed off, but they have mad sex after that. This girl must have the lowest self-confidence in the world to go back with a guy like this. Then again, she does hard drugs, and her mom finds them in one shot. That is, an IDIOT. And that scene was weird too, but eff it. What is this film?

I skipped through the end because there were too many sex scenes, too much random anger because everyone is an idiot, and too much melodrama from a guy who deserves castration. The film ends with Murphy taking a bath and crying to his baby, telling the baby that, "Life isn't easy :'((" Life isn't easy, but all these problems are brought on by HIMSELF. And then Electra is in the bath, they hug, and then the credits roll.

I missed some things, but I can sum it up: sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, and sex. We even got transvestite sex after Electra decides it would help them or something. I'm surprised there were no horses. And, just like in Enter the Void, we get a 3D penis-in-vagina scene. Great, just what I needed.

What about the acting? As was the case with Enter the Void, Love had absolutely SHIT acting. The acting was complete GARBAGE, except during the sex scenes, but it was actual sex, so I don't see how they could screw (heh) that up. Murphy was shit, Electra was god awful, the blonde chick was shit, Gaspar Noé was shit, every single character that said anything said it in such a robotic way, I felt like cutting my wrists. A film doesn't need the best acting in the world to be a good film, BUT DAMN, IT SHOULD BE VIEWABLE.

Was there anything redeemable about Love? No. It was atrocious. Even the name drives me up the wall. The film was not about love. The film didn't portray a story of love through sex. It was a shitty porno disguised as art so if your mom caught you fapping to it, you could tell her it was an "art" film. But it's not. I saw some reviewers saying there was more to this film than meets the eye. There isn't. Watch a porno and you'll get the same experience. Honestly, why do films like this get MADE? This one was even premiered at the Cannes festival. HOW. It was also produced by the same guy who did La vie d'Adèle. Why am I not surprised?

Sex should be an intimate show of affection, but Love and other films like it ruin every notion we should have about sex. I'm tired of garbage being labelled as "artsy" when it's really just bad. Don't watch it. I am beyond furious with this crap and beyond furious that this film wasn't burned at the reel at its first premier. God DAMN it.

Review XCVI - Enter the Void

Review XCVI
Enter the Void (2009)

Well, I guess this will be my final farewell to 2014 on this blog. I work tomorrow, and then I'll hopefully head off for some festivities in town. So what film have I decided to say goodbye with? Gaspard Noé's Enter the Void. I heard about Gaspard Noé a while back after finding this list of "fucked-up pretentious films". I brought up this director with my ex, but he wisely put his films on a shelf in a basement locked away from human touch. But, well, I got curious. Plus, how bad could it be? ... Right?

Oscar (Nathaniel Brown) lives in Tokyo with his sister, Linda (Paz de la Huerta), and is enjoying a hit of N,N-Dimethyltryptamine, also known as DMT. He's awaken by a call from Victor (Olly Alexander), who asks that he bring some pills to "The Void". Alex (Cyril Roy) ends up tagging along, but things quickly turn for the worst, with Oscar being shot. Now he'll finally be able to experience the ultimate trip.

My first regret when I started this film was that it was over two hours and a half. A film better be damn good if it's that long. And guess what? It wasn't. Okay, so, first impressions. As I said, I mistakenly didn't pay attention to the length of the film. And this is was advertised as a messed-up film. I was already doomed. The film starts with a huge, neon sign reading "enter". I thought that was pretty cool. You soon realise that the film is captured through Oscar's eyes. We are Oscar. All right, that's innovative... A bit nauseating, but Oscar'll die and then we'll get normal shots, right? We'll get to that. So the film is through his eyes. I mean, it's unique, I'll give it that. But you'll notice something as soon as Oscar opens his mouth - Nathaniel Brown can't act for shit. Neither can Paz de la Huerta, but at least she has some life in her voice. Nathaniel Brown sounds like a fifteen-year-old filming a movie in his backyard for school - which is something I totally did and my acting totally compares to this guy. Okay, so I got some cool sign and innovative camera work, but I don't care for the acting. Now we get a psychedelic trip, which loses my attention quickly. But thankfully Oscar gets waken up rather quickly. Then we meet Alex - yep, this guy's acting is just as atrocious. And he has a huge hard-on for Linda. Never have I seen a brother so chill in listening to his drug dealer talk about how he wants to nail his sister. The two discuss what it's like to die according to some Buddhist book - I don't know. Foreshadowing has never been so strong.

Skipping ahead, we meet Victor, and, oh shit, Oscar's been set-up! Alex totally called it! And now he's been shot! Well, all right, no more first-person perspective. ... So now we're replacing this with a bird's eye view? And it's blurry? And swishing around like a drunk? Never have I been so aggravated while watching a film. Or sick. And the rest of the film is basically this view. But what about the plot? What do we get to see now? Well, Linda's a stripper and proceeds to bone her boss before she finds out her brother is dead. The irony! Oh, man, that was good, wasn't it? Guys, I could continue, but seriously, the plot is predictable as hell. We find out that Oscar and Linda's parents died in a car accident and promised they would never be separated. They discuss how their parents would "one day bring them to Tokyo", hence why the two are in Tokyo in the first place. Everything is explained with the use of crazy zoom-ins, epileptic-inducing flashes, and annoying, annoying shots. Can you tell I disliked the film? The ideas of the camera work were interesting - and we do get a break from the bird's eye view when we get some shots from behind Oscar's shoulder - but it gets old really, really fast. Had this been a short film, I would have thought it was cool what they were doing. But for a feature-length film, forget it. It gets annoying fast. If the plot and characters were any good, it would be forgivable. If the acting was fine, I could maybe forgive it. But the plot was shit and self-explanatory, I hated the characters, and the acting was probably the worst I've seen in a good while. I find it difficult to pinpoint good acting at times, but here, the acting is just garbage. And you know what? Gaspard Noé doesn't speak English, and his scenes are improvised. So he had to have someone tell him the dialogue was coherent while he filmed. This explains the really shitty dialogue, the really predictable dialogue from subpar actors and actresses. It could also explain the really shitty acting. And guess what? Because this is a messed-up film, we get some really pointless sex scenes. Here's a spoiler for you, but at the end, Linda has sex with Alex after she gets an abortion from her boss (did I mention I hate every character in this film?). She proceeds to say, "Cum inside me." Next we get some digitally-animated penis in a vagina. I know porn videos do this sometimes (granted, it's real, not animated), but... why. WHY. And then Oscar is reborn. This connection between mother, sister, and lover is shown throughout the whole film. Let's Freudian it up some more, guys! Honestly, the last ten minutes are probably just of people having sex. I can't remember because I was reading comics at the same time because I couldn't wait for the film to end. Honestly, these weird films and their sex scenes. Please, guys, stop.

This film was too long for nothing. The acting was shit, the characters were shit, and the plot was uninteresting. Any good thing the film had going for it was defenestrated within a short period of time. The crazy, tripped out ending of 2001: A Space Odyssey had a point to it. This film was just crazy for the sake of being crazy. And you know what? It wasn't even that crazy. Everything was spelled out to the viewer. So I'm not satisfied in any regard. Avoid Enter the Void. I'm sure this won't be the last we hear of Gaspard Noé.