Gaspar Noé’s Love is anything but pornography. Pornography makes no attempt to delve into the psychology of the humans portrayed within; it contains actors as models, rather than actors as characters with any sort of depth. While Murphy (Karl Glusman), Elektra (Aomi Muyock) and Omi (Klara Kristin), the three chief characters, may not be the most complex individuals you’ll come across in the cinema this year, they still have hopes and dreams and aspirations, and undoubtedly transcend the notion of “the pornographic model” by a long shot.

Love has such a loosely constructed narrative that it’s difficult to summarize, but it essentially examines the mind and memories of its American protagonist, Murphy, now married and with a child, as he…

"I'm a loser. Yeah, just a dick. And dick has no brain. A dick has only one purpose: to fuck. And I fucked it all up. Yeah. I'm good at one thing: fucking things up."

Beautiful people passionately having sex for the entire film? It's like the most French film ever made, it's almost like an extreme version of some Truffaut's film and I'm all here for it. I don't like telling people that they're wrong but let me have this one, if you really think that this film is pure pornography you ARE plainly wrong. Pornography doesn't have any depth or passion, it's simply fucking and LOVE is different.

Possibly the greatest provocateur of modern cinema, Gaspar Noé isn't…

I consider myself to be a Gaspar Noe fanboy since he has directed two of my favorite films, Irreversible and Enter the Void. With that being said Love is not even close to being in the same league as those two masterpieces.

Love is visually appealing and stands out as something you do not see in everyday cinema considering how much sex there is in it. About half of the runtime is just sex, calling this a porno is definitely up to semantics.

I think the erotic scenes are the best thing going for Love. Especially when the acting and dialogue are just plain awful. I felt no chemistry between the two main actors and their conversations were cringeworthy and…

In anticipation of Gaspar Noé’s latest work, Climax (which as a career first for him was screened in Cannes to almost universal acclaim), I decided to go back and give his more divisive previous film Love a chance. Noé is a notorious provocateur, and an essential member of the New French Extremity movement. Love shows that there still are boundaries for him to push. A central question he seeems to want to instill here is: Is there room for explicit unsimulated sexual content in today’s cinematic landscape, or does it automatically deserve the label ‘pornography’? I suppose the latter question is a matter of semantics, so what really is interesting to ask here is whether or not it can be…