There is an unspoken convention in writing about sexually explicit films for the reviewer to find some way to strongly imply that they were not themselves aroused. For instance, they will write that the film “lacked heat”, or was “surprisingly conservative”, or sometimes they’ll use the adjectives “tepid”, “shockingly dull”, or “clinical”. The implication is always the same, however, and perhaps the words say more about the reviewer than the film itself.
In recent years, there have been plentiful opportunities for reviewers to roll out these adjectives, as there have been more and more films that blurred the sweaty lines between pornography and cinema. Filmmakers like Catherine Breillat and Lars von Trier have made skillful use of body doubles to make it very clear what was before going on below the frame. Both are intelligent, difficult filmmakers, but their work tends to focus somewhat obsessively on the unhealthy aspects of sex, the ways our desires can push us to some very dark places. As one friend put it of von Trier’s two-part Nymphomaniac, “It was a decent movie, but I don’t really get the impression that he much likes sex.” In fact, of all the recent explicit movies (that I’ve seen anyway), 1 the only one that seemed to me to have been made by someone looking to promote the one activity that really needs no promotion was Cameron Mitchell’s dippy Shortbus (2006) a sex-positive ensemble piece about hip New Yorkers overcoming their hangups (yes, that again!) and laying happily ever after.
So, it was hard to shiver with much anticipation at the news that Gaspar Noé was making a sexually explicit film in 3-D, a format that seemingly peaked with Creature from the Black Lagoon in 1954. Noé is known for the trippy and difficult Enter the Void (2009) and the vicious and assaultive Irreversible (2002) and is the type of director who gets called a “provocateur”, so it seemed likely to be another film about sex in which the act, or everything around it would be ugly. This prediction was somewhat complicated though by two interesting notes: first, Noé said in interviews that his hope was to evoke the highly aestheticized, even lovely style exemplified by 70s sex films like Emmanuelle. Secondly, Noé has a character in Love signal his intentions by bemoaning the lack of “sentimental sexuality” in films, by which I take him to mean the tendency in films, particularly porn films, to depict one of the most emotional events in many people’s lives in a totally unemotional way.
The characters at the center of Love, Murphy (played by Karl Glusman) and Electra (Aomi Muyock), are certainly emotional, although I suppose it could be argued that they don’t really love one another. And they certainly do have real sex, which Noé gets out of the way right at the beginning with the two naked actors manually stimulating one another to climax. Murphy and Electra have a lot of sex in the film, all of which is shown in flashbacks as their relationship has ended badly. There is also one epic encounter with a third, which is shot rather tastefully from above, in semi slow motion, and scored to rather irritating acid rock by Pink Floyd. The threesome scene has been the most hyped sequence in the film and it was clear that Noé intended the sex to be both arousing and evocative of a drug experience. The cinematography, by Benoît Debie, is quite nice. Just to avoid hypocrisy here, the sex scenes were mildly arousing and my date and I were at least inspired to make out in the back of the nearly empty Ottawa theater at several points.
Despite all of their hot sex, Murphy and Electra’s relationship fell apart. The film takes place on New Year’s Day, with Murphy waking up with his current partner, Omi (Klara Kristin) who once took part in that threesome, but to whom Murphy went back for some moresome, resulting in a pregnancy, a child, and a much gloomier life than he would have had with Electra. His ex, meanwhile, hasn’t exactly improved her station, having gotten hooked on cocaine and disappeared, which results in a call from her mother to Mopey Murphy in hopes of finding her. Is she dead? If so, was it his fault? The body of the film is him recalling their love through their sex. To refer to this as a “tragedy” is something the film doesn’t really deserve, yet I think that’s what Noé has in mind through the structure of the story, not to mention her classically tragic name. One cringe-worthy line even has Murphy observe “I think Electra has a daddy complex”, to which I suppose the audience is meant to smirk knowingly.
Does it hold up though? The tragic sense, as I see it, is the awareness that our desires often far outstrip what we’re allowed in life and that this gap often leads us to pain. As in tragedy, the characters fall prey to their own flaws and one of them might well die off screen. They also seem to be ciphers: he for “Murphy’s law” which flashes on the screen at one point and she for the Electra complex. His unwanted child is even called Gaspar. The problem is that they’re ciphers mostly because they’re not particularly well-developed characters. Murphy is a self-centered, fairly pretentious mope who gets his true love into cocaine before cheating on her and getting Omi pregnant. Omi is portrayed as little more than a drag on his life. Electra is madly in love and lust with him and too hopelessly devoted, which proves her downfall. To be fair, it probably should be remembered that we only know of Electra through his memories, so he might be remembering her as a one-dimensional sexual fantasy. In an extreme interpretation, she might even have been a figment of his imagination.
This leads to a major question about art: should artists depict characters who are vapid, selfish, and self-absorbed? Aren’t many real people this way? There have been plenty of intelligent and humanistic depictions of deeply flawed people in cinematic history. Furthermore, the characters here are sufficiently young that this could be a first love, and weren’t most of us vapid, pretentious, oversexed, and naively romantic in our younger years? Is it possible to make an interesting chamber drama about uninteresting people? Is it worthwhile? Is it necessary?
Stephen King once made the observation that “genre” fiction, such as his own, tends to deal with ordinary people in extraordinary situations, while “literary” fiction deals with extraordinary people in ordinary situations. This film, however, is of a subgenre of independent movie that shows painfully ordinary people in depressingly ordinary situations. Like young love itself, one hopes against hope that it will work, but aside from the sex, there’s ultimately just too much lacking.
Enter the Void is overlong and repetitive, but worth seeing for the cinematography/technical aspects alone.
Also, that header image is beautiful, but all I can think about is how much her shoulder hurts there.Report
I believe that Debi also did the cinematography for Spring Breakers, which was gorgeous although there wasn’t a lot going on with the storyReport
Hoo boy, Harmony Korine. I’ve only seen Gummo & Julien Donkey-Boy.
And…that’s all I’ll say about that.Report
I enjoyed Gumbo mostly because I still don’t know what the fish to make of it, which is something I appreciate with so many formulaic movies. The problem I had with Spring Breakers is I knew what I was supposed to make of it, which made it kind of boring.Report
I’m with you, I often prefer to see something that confuses me, rather than bores me.
And I actually enjoyed Gummo too – there are a couple scenes that really stick with you, because you realize how completely sad and lonely many people are (=bathtub spaghetti).
Still, it’s an…odd film. And I don’t recall feeling as positively about Julien Donkey-Boy.Report
I don’t remember liking Julien Donkey Boy either although I’ve no memory of why not. I did like Mister Lonely.Report
I was curious about that one because I’m a J. Spaceman fan and he did the soundtrack, but never saw it.Report
The one time I watched Enter the Void, an old friend and I dropped acid and watched it on a huge projection screen. There’s a part of me that is convinced I should never watch that movie again, because I don’t want to find out which parts were real and which parts I hallucinated.Report
Those days are long behind me, but I made my then-girlfriend watch Evil Dead 2 (which she’d never seen) while we were in similar circumstances.
She kept asking me, “…is it SUPPOSED to look like this?” I think she has the same problem of not knowing how much of her recollection of the film Raimi is responsible for, and how much of it Hofman is.Report
Interestingly enough, I saw Evil Dead II in a dirt mall theater with my dad at age 12 and the only other viewers were two teens in the front of the theater smoking what I later realized was pot.Report
I see what you did there.Report
You do? Can you show it to me?
(seriously, I have no idea what you mean).Report
I see what you did there.Report
WHAT IS GOING ON?!Report
Enter the Void is overlong and repetitiveReport
…I am still not following you; those are my genuine literal and distinct criticisms of the film Enter the Void. The movie is too long, and it repeats itself (two different problems). A shorter movie could still repeat itself, and a longer film could not repeat itself, but still be too long.
I suppose you could call a literal void ‘repetitive’, but that’s not the way we usually use the word, which normally implies two or more occurrences or objects, not the lack of same as in a void – still, I suppose you could demarcate the void into smaller sequential repetitive voids, if you have an outside referent to apply.Report
An overlong thing, repetitively entering a void, wot wot?Report
[shamefacedly hands in Childish-Innuendo card; sadly realizes that perhaps he IS turning into an old man]Report
That or I have a mental age of approximately “drunk ferret”Report
My favorite review of Nymphomaniac was that it was a movie using sex to show the superiority of Jewish to Christian theology. The titular Nymphomaniac is seeking a transcendent experience and getting burned, the Christian version of salvation through Grace, while the Jewish man she is relating her story to is handling things slowly and coming out in tact.Report
The titular Nymphomaniac
So to speak.Report
Is he supposed to be Jewish? I missed it. Also I’m pretty sure Nymphomaniac ends with her killing him who’s listening to her story, so I don’t know if he comes out intact.Report
I was thinking the same thing myself as I read through your review, and then the words themselves popped up. (Disclaimer: I haven’t seen the film.)
In any case, I tend to find works about hedonism both boring and depressing. That’s all I have to say, really. People need to get beyond the idea that being validated sexually or socially is all there is to life. I’ve found Girls childish and boring for much the same reason, and I kept thinking of that terrible show throughout your review. The critics tend to love this type of thing, for sure, but I think it’s all just a giant fugue of people looking for external validation.Report
The monotheistic world has been subjected to anti-hedonistic arguments ever since Constantine decided to make Christianity the state religion of the Roman Empire. All of the monotheistic faiths, along with many of the Dharmic faiths, have a variety of arguments against different forms of hedonism. Until very recently any expression of sexuality outside some strictly controlled forms would result in a lot of problems even in the most liberal countries let alone authoritarian ones. If you had the personality that tended towards hedonism than you were actively persecuted even more so than just venturing on the wild side. A lot of the works of art that focus very heavily on presenting hedonism or to use a less loaded word sensuality as a good thing are just natural reactions to thousands of years of anti-sensuality.
Since I’m good little middle-class Jew and somewhat excluded from the party, I do not find the pro-sensuality argument to be entirely convincing but I can see where they are coming from. There are people who just have some really strong sex or sensation drives and constantly need to engage their senses. There are also people who are just bad at living anything remotely considered a conventional life. These aren’t immoral or evil people but people who have a Bohemian streak and would find the get up, go to school/work, and raise a family or contribute to the community in some way as really chaffing.Report
I remember Christopher Hitchens’s comment about Ayn Rand that he didn’t think most people needed a philosophical justification for greed because it does fine without any. It’s sort of the same with hedonism- people will keep having sex even if nobody advocates for it.Report
I’m so sorry. It’s Pavlovian:
https://youtu.be/0ImRyPymRAMReport
I still think that some dedicated historian is going to find primary sources that reveal that Ayn Rand was a very deep level Soviet agent set out to design an argument for capitalism so morally repugnant that Americans would reject it. Like most Soviet projects, it failed.Report
She allowed her immediate family to be nearly-starved by the Communists. That’s some dedication to the role on her part.Report
Marx like Jesus requires people to forsake their family for the cause.Report