By Kai Granaas

This heavily hyped and marketed "3D porn movie" is anything but that. Love is a drama about a man depressed in his relationship and fatherhood, pining after an electric relationship he had before he messed it up. Gaspar Noé produces yet another "shocking" film, maybe even more talked about than his 2002 masterpiece Irreversible.

Love is inherently Gaspar Noé's meditation on love and sex, on how the two are intertwined, and how fundamental they are to each other and everyday human life in general. The film is already infamous for it's numerous unsimulated sex scenes - I can only imagine that shooting simulated sex scenes must be difficult, but I cannot imagine what unsimulated sex scenes would be like. Aomi Muyock and Karl Glusman put in raw performances, emotionally and very literally, physically. However, here Noé does what he's best at: taking things that are taboo and looking at them differently. Like these notorious posters.

In Irreversible, the unwavering static eye-level camera during the rape scene and fire-extinguisher scene "de-glamourised" the packaging of violence into entertainment in the medium of cinema. In this film, he does the opposite with a subtle andeffective touch, in a sense. Love shows what goes on behind different closed doors in everyday life, which is sex. In most films, the sex club where Murphy (Karl Glusman) and Elektra (Aomi Muyock) go would be portrayed as seedy. In this one, a police officer earnestly recommends the place to them, and the Steadicam moves through the various sexual acts being performed with an objective eye. A key element to the film's success is that no-one involved in the creation of the film "judged" the characters, not only in terms of sex, but also in terms of drug use. There is a large amount of drug use to varying degrees of damage, but again - this is what happens behind closed doors every day, and has done so for millennia.

The numerous sex scenes taking place in private between Murphy and Elektra are composed for a certain effect. The set design and the gorgeous lighting create a canvas for the actors to paint a picture with the intertwining of their bodies - essentially, sucking the porn out of sex and showing it as an expression of love. This is why it is confusing when many people refer to Love as the "porno" - it's the opposite. There is nothing in this film you haven't seen before if you've ever been on the internet, and that's the point. Love, expressed through sex vividly without soft lighting and various cuts is almost taboo.

Noé is a masterful director, and is in complete control throughout the film - the evidence is in in construction. The soundtrack, the cinematography, the editing, the structure, the general production are perfectly in harmony, creating a unique visual experience. In all of his films, Noé has carefully curated a raw and energetic collection of songs, adding to the emotions of the scenes. "Maggot Brain" by Funkadelic was a perfectly weighted and inspired choice for a climactic threesome that spans the whole song's length. Longtime collaborator Benoît Debie shoots some of his most impressively composed and lit shots ever, creating at least a third of the tone seen onscreen at any given moment. Debie's ability and eye work in conjunction with the sparse and characteristic editing of Noé, forming a loose temporal structure of the film that meanders without getting lost. A third of the film's impact is the choice of music, another third the technical achievements of cinematography and a final third of the performances.

The script was apparently more of a treatment rather than script - it was 8-pages long and essentially all of the dialogue was improvised. For that reason, sometimes the dialogue feels fairly repetitive, but other than that it feels realistic. The insults and irrational arguments as well as compliments sound like any other couple.

Finally, the 3D. Trust Gaspar Noé to turn me into a believer. After watching Everest recently, which convinced me that 3D has some merit, then Noé came along and delighted my eye-balls with Love. 3D, since Avatar, was logically applied to action-y, adventure-y, scifi-y blockbusters. But to a drama by a French director? This stroke of genius, as well as very well-done stereoscopic processing, adds to the film. Noé was quoted in an Indiewire interview discussing 3D, saying that "It makes things more real, more intimate. You feel like you are puppets inside a box, because it's a rectangle with faces inside."Of course, he cannot help but have some sly fun with the possibilities of 3D - with a close-up of an erect penis ejaculating at the audience. The money shot, if you will.

Gaspar Noé skilfully walks the thin line of shock value/style over substance with panache, not giving it a second thought. Like Michael Haneke, to appreciate his films one has to commit to them and the authorial vision presented. As a result, Noé films are deeply impacting at a visceral level, an emotional level, and later, at an intellectual level. Love is a beautiful, if sometimes dark, love-story in essence.