Gaspar Noé, the provocative filmmaker behind Irreversible and Enter the Void, premiered his latest picture Love at the Cannes Film Festival last night - but critics haven't been totally on-board for his hardcore 3D sex odyssey.

Initial reviews have delved into the film's specifics in eye-opening details (basically, graphic sex mixed with a lot of navel gazing); however this taboo-shattering film isn't as shocking as initially expected. Read on for a round-up of reviews and reaction from social media...

The Telegraph - Robbie Collin

"The problem with Love isn't its purpose, which I find wholly laudable, nor the sex itself, which is beautiful and also - to use a taboo critical term - sexy. It's that both these things deserved a far richer and more intelligent film to support them. Catherine Breillat's Romance and Bertrand Bonello's The Pornographer both gnawed at the boundaries of taboo, but as you watched them, you felt both films working on your soul. But Noé's film is all look, no touch."

The Guardian - Peter Bradshaw

"Love is Noé's explicit sex film in 3D: that is, vanilla heterosexual sex, in girl-boy and girl-girl-boy permutations (you sure can tell a straight guy made this movie) with a conscientious emphasis on condoms. There is also one scene with a transsexual, with whom our male hero totally chickens out of doing anything rude. No spanking."

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The Hollywood Reporter - Leslie Felperin

"If you cut out all the sex scenes in Gaspar Noe's Love, what's left is a wistful, some might say sappy story about heartbreak, made with impressive cinematic elan but somewhat shallow emotional depth. Indeed, by Noe's standards, especially compared to his last Enter the Void, Love is pretty innocuous, hardly shocking at all. This may seem like a surprising thing to say about a movie that features a tight close-up of a penis ejaculating into 3D space at its audience."

Indiewire - Eric Kohn

"Despite the 3D effects, Noé does little to energise the explicit on-screen action. His first shot finds naked Murphy (Karl Glusman) lying on his back while a woman strokes his member for minutes on end. Eventually, he finishes up in traditional fashion as the screen cuts to black - an inevitability that yielded applause at the movie's Cannes premiere, as if it marked the climax of an extended drum solo."

Variety - Peter Debruge

"Given the escalating ambition of Noé's oeuvre and the pornographic promo materials teased in advance of the pic's Cannes premiere, who would have thought that Love would ultimately prove to be Noé's tamest film? Like last year's Nymphomaniac, this shocker is bound to test tolerance levels in every market it enters, further eroding the lingering Puritanism that exists toward on-screen depictions of passion."

And here's what social media had to say about Love...

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Simon Reynolds

Movies Editor 


Simon has worked as a journalist for more than a decade, writing on staff and freelance for Hearst, Dennis, Future and Autovia titles before joining Cision in 2022.