★★★☆☆ (or an honest 7/10 – depending on your tolerance for the avant-garde)
Love (2015): A Visceral, Polarizing Trip Through Raw Emotion and Explicit Art love 2015 movie review
You want to see a director truly commit to his vision, no matter how messy or uncomfortable. Skip it if: Explicit content, nonlinear storytelling, or unsympathetic leads are dealbreakers for you. ★★★☆☆ (or an honest 7/10 – depending on
In the end, Love is like the relationship it depicts: passionate, exhausting, beautiful in flashes, and ultimately something you’re not sure you’d ever want to live through again. Visually, Love is stunning
Visually, Love is stunning. Shot in immersive 3D (a gimmick that somehow works to put you inside the cramped Parisian apartment), Noé bathes every frame in deep reds, bruising purples, and the hazy glow of neon. The soundtrack—featuring John Frusciante’s melancholic guitar—is hypnotic. The film’s greatest strength is its unflinching honesty about how memory works: we don’t remember love chronologically; we remember it in spikes of pleasure, pain, jealousy, and regret. The sex scenes, which are graphic and unsimulated, are never just titillating—they are tools to show intimacy, boredom, anger, and even grief.
Here’s where opinions split. The dialogue is often clunky, pretentious, and self-indulgent. Murphy (Karl Glusman) is a deeply unlikable protagonist—whiny, narcissistic, and emotionally immature. It’s hard to invest in his heartbreak when he treats every woman in his life as a muse or a vessel for his own angst. Electra (Aomi Muyock) fares better, bringing a feral, tragic energy to the screen, but even she is often reduced to the “manic pixie nightmare” trope. At nearly 140 minutes, the film drags in its second half, mistaking repetition for depth.
Murphy, an American film student living in Paris, looks back on a turbulent, all-consuming relationship with a mysterious woman named Electra. Trapped in a mundane life with his new partner, Omi, and their young child, Murphy receives news of Electra’s disappearance, triggering a flood of memories. The narrative leaps back and forth in time, chronicling the passionate highs and destructive lows of their love affair.