Morning, January 1st. the phone rings. Murphy, 25, wakes up next to Omi, the mother of his son. He listens to his answering machine: Electra’s mother tells him she’s worried that she hasn’t heard from her daughter in several months. Alone, Murphy thinks back to his past and his chaotic, two-year love story with Electra in Paris…

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Do Gaspar Noé’s movies have any other point than to shock and a create controversy? Love, promoted as the pornographic love story in 3D, begs this question without really answering it. Because even though the director of Irreversible takes great pleasure in filming raw sex and the sexes, he uses up considerable energy to tell the umpteenth story of a passionate love story that drives an unstable man (Karl Glusman) and woman (the excellent Aomi Muyock) to try drugs, a threesome, partner swapping, without really questioning the eternal stereotypes – and with a kind of intolerance towards homosexuality and transsexuality. A pretentious tone makes the movie too safe and in the end it is too long. Even more surprising: Noé’s mise en scene doesn’t measure up to the ambitious challenge he sets himself, soon becoming less sensational than Enter the Void, his memorable hallucinogenic film. Much ado about nothing. Noé has thrown himself into his project wholeheartedly, without thinking of his partner – the audience.