Film Love
Lindsey Cynthia
Love is a 2015 erotic drama art film[5] written and directed by Gaspar Noé.[6] The film marked Noé's fourth directorial venture after a gap of five years. It had its premiere at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival and was released in 3D. The film is notable for its unsimulated sex scenes. The film received mixed reviews.
Murphy (Karl Glusman) is an American film student living in Paris. On a rainy January morning, he receives a call at the small apartment he shares with Danish partner Omi (Klara Kristin) and their 18-month-old son, Gaspar. The surprise visitor is Nora, the mother of his ex-girlfriend Electra (Aomi Muyock), who asks if Murphy knows of her daughter's whereabouts. She hasn't heard from Electra in three months, and is worried, given her issues with depression and previous suicide attempts.
For the rest of this day, Murphy recalls his relationship with Electra in a series of fragmented, nonlinear flashbacks. They depict their first meeting; their quick hook-up; and their lives over the next two years, which are filled with drug abuse, rough sex, and tender moments. Murphy and Electra eventually met and had a no-strings-attached threesome with Omi, then a young adolescent, as a way to add some excitement to their love life.
However, Murphy continued his sexual relationship with Omi, without Electra's knowledge. This eventually resulted in an unplanned pregnancy, due to a broken condom. Omi refused to terminate the pregnancy, as she was against abortion. Admitting the truth to Electra ultimately ended her and Murphy's relationship, leading to the present-day set up of Murphy and Omi raising the child together. Electra's whereabouts and ultimate fate are left unresolved at the end of the film.
Gaspar Noé said that some of the sex scenes in the film are real while others are simulated. The director also preferred not to reveal which ones were simulated and leave the possibility to the spectators to detect the true from the false. "I think the experience of sex should be represented in all its power - instead of being caricatured as it is too often", he explained before specifying that he also did according to wants and needs of the actors: "I also composed with the limits of the actors. For Karl Glusman (Murphy), the representation of ejaculation was done in a natural way; actresses experience this differently and I respected their limits."[16]
The week before its debut at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, the film's U.S. distribution rights were acquired by Alchemy.[17][18] It was selected to be screened in the Vanguard section of the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival.[19] The film also screened in The International Film Festival of Kerala, held in Thiruvananthapuram, India.[20]
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 40% with an average rating of 5.1/10, based on 94 reviews. The website's critics consensus reads: "Love sees writer-director Gaspar Noé delivering some of his warmest and most personal work; unfortunately, it's also among his most undeveloped and least compelling."[22] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 51 out of 100, based on 27 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[23]
Love Actually is a 2003 British romantic comedy film written and directed by Richard Curtis. The Christmas holiday film features an ensemble cast, composed predominantly of British actors, many of whom had worked with Curtis in previous projects. An international co-production between the U.K., U.S., and France, it was mostly filmed on-location in London, England. The movie delves into different aspects of love as shown through 10 separate stories involving a variety of individuals, many of whom are interlinked as the plot progresses. The story begins five weeks before Christmas and is played out in a weekly countdown until the holiday, followed by an epilogue that takes place in the New Year.
A voice-over opens the film, commenting that whenever the narrator gets gloomy about the state of the world, he thinks of the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport, and the pure and uncomplicated love of lovers, friends and families welcoming their loved ones. He also points out that the messages from the 9/11 victims were messages of love and not hate. The story then switches among the interconnecting "love stories" of many people:
Juliet and Peter's wedding is videotaped by the best man, Mark, where a surprise band plays the Beatles' "All You Need Is Love" as they walk out of the church. Although the couple believe Mark dislikes Juliet, it is later revealed that he is actually in love with her.
Jamie returns to England, realises he is in love with Aurélia, and begins learning Portuguese. He returns to France to find her and ends up walking through town with her father and sister, gathering additional people as they walk to her waitressing job. In basic, and often grammatically incorrect, Portuguese, he declares his love for her and proposes. She says yes in broken English, showing she too had been studying English "just in cases", as the crowd erupts in applause.
Sarah first appears at Juliet and Peter's wedding, sitting next to her friend Jamie. An American working at Harry's graphic design company, she is in love with the creative director, Karl. Prompted by Harry, they finally connect at the Christmas party, and Karl drives her home. Sarah invites Karl in and they immediately pull off their clothes and begin to get intimate when Michael, her mentally ill brother, telephones from a psychiatric hospital, aborting their tryst. On Christmas Eve, they are both working late. Karl tries to find words but just wishes her a merry Christmas and leaves. In tears, Sarah calls Michael and visits him to give him a Christmas gift.
John and Judy are professional stand-ins for films. They meet doing the sex scenes for a film for which Tony is a production assistant. John tells Judy, "It's lovely to find someone I can actually chat to." While they are perfectly comfortable being naked and simulating sex on-set, they are shy and tentative off-set. They carefully pursue a relationship, attending the Christmas pageant (involving David and Natalie, Harry and Karen's children, Daniel and Sam, etc.) at the local school with John's brother. They get engaged by the end of the film.
All the stories are linked in some way; while Billy Mack and his manager may not connect with any of the other characters physically, Billy appears frequently on characters' radios and TVs, his music video twice providing an important plot device for Sam's pursuit of Joanna, and they also cross paths with the other characters in the closing Heathrow scene. John and Judy work with Tony, who is best friends with Colin, who works for a catering company that services the office where Sarah, Karl, Mia, and Harry work. Mia is friends with Mark, who runs the art gallery where the Christmas office party takes place. Mia also lives next door to Natalie. Mark is in love with Juliet and friends with Peter. The couple is friends with Jamie and Sarah. Harry is married to Karen, who is friends with Daniel, and her brother is David, who works with Natalie. Harry and Karen's children (and thus David's niece and nephew), Natalie's siblings (and thus Mia's neighbours), and Carol's son are all schoolmates of Sam and Joanna. Daniel proclaims that his late wife was the only one for him unless Claudia Schiffer were to call him up. Carol is played by Claudia Schiffer.
Initially, Curtis started writing with two distinct and separate films in mind, each featuring expanded versions of what would eventually become storylines in Love Actually: those featuring Hugh Grant and Colin Firth.[3] He changed tack and became frustrated with the process.[4] Partly inspired by the films of Robert Altman as well as films such as Pulp Fiction, and inspired by Curtis having become "more interested in writing a film about love and what love sort of means" he had the idea of creating an ensemble film.[4] The film initially did not have any sort of Christmas theme, although Curtis's penchant for such films eventually caused him to write it as one.[5]
Curtis's original concept for the film included fourteen different scenarios, but four of them were cut (two having been filmed).[6] The scene in which Colin attempts to chat up the female caterer at the wedding appeared in drafts of the screenplay for Four Weddings and a Funeral, but was cut from the final version.[7][8] The music video for Billy Mack's song, "Christmas Is All Around", is a tribute to Robert Palmer's 1986 video, "Addicted to Love".[6] Curtis has spoken negatively about the editing process for the film, which he labelled in 2014 as a "catastrophe" and "the only nightmare scenario that I've been caught in".[9] The film was rushed in order to be ready for the 2003 Christmas season which he likened to "three-dimensional chess".[9] For the scene in which Rowan Atkinson's character Rufus annoys Harry, Alan Rickman's reaction was reportedly genuine, having been "driven insane" by the time constraints.[10] Hugh Grant disliked filming the dance scene as he called it "excruciating" and "absolute hell".[11][12]
Ant & Dec played themselves in the film with Bill Nighy's character referring to Dec as "Ant or Dec". This refers to the common mistaking of one for the other, owing to their constant joint professional presence as a comedy and presenting duo. The veteran actress Jeanne Moreau is seen briefly, entering a taxi at the Marseille Airport. The soul singer Ruby Turner appears as Joanna Anderson's mother, one of the backing singers at the school Christmas pageant.
Curtis cast his daughter Scarlett in the film; she was given the choice of being an angel or a lobster, and played the part of Lobster number 2 in the nativity play, on the condition that she meet Keira Knightley.[14]
Most of the film was made on location in London, including Trafalgar Square, the central court of Somerset House in the Strand, Grosvenor Chapel on South Audley Street near Hyde Park, St Paul's Church, Clapham, the Millennium Bridge, Selfridges department store on Oxford Street, Lambeth Bridge, the Tate Modern in the former Bankside Power Station, Canary Wharf, Marble Arch, St. Luke's Mews off All Saint's Road in Notting Hill, Chelsea Bridge, the OXO Tower, London City Hall, Poplar Road in Herne Hill, Elliott School in Pullman Gardens, Putney, Heathrow Airport and the Marseille Airport. Scenes set in 10 Downing Street were filmed at Shepperton Studios.[19]
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