Review: Gaspar Noé’s ‘Love’ fades into tedious voyeurism

For those familiar with the work of Argentine-French provocateur Gaspar Noé (the cheaply brutal “Irreversible,� the gorgeous head trip “Enter the Void�), the prospect of a love story told primarily through close-up, explicit, 3-D coitus might sound as much an attention-grabbing threat as a promise to excite. The simple truth is that his raw tale of lost, lamented passion — immodestly branded “Love� — is a noble misfire won and lost in those sex scenes, which are performed with admirable openness by newcomers Karl Glusman and Aomi Muyock.

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Noé’s story is so simple as to be almost childish. American-in-Paris Murphy (Glusman), a wannabe filmmaker disenchanted by life as a new young dad, recalls the one who got away, self-destructive French art student Electra (Muyock). Their combustible romance — equal parts rapture and rupture — is played backward in short bursts of unadulterated sensation, Noé’s evident aim being for the frequent lovemaking to serve the same function that dialogue does in every other boy-meets-girl story.

That’s a potent concept, but the trouble is that it quickly becomes a tedious voyeurism when the characters are so thinly conceived as flesh avatars instead of flesh-and-blood people, and the actors aren’t skilled enough to suggest much else. When Murphy talks about his desire to bring “sentimental sexuality� to cinema, it’s as if explicitness has infected Noé’s non-nude scenes too.

When “Love� works, Noé achieves a lulling, melancholic frenzy about sex and memory, but the foundation isn’t strong enough to make his movie ever seem more than a stereoscopic fermata: one envelope-pushing note held way too long.

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“Love.�

No MPAA rating.

Running time: 2 hours, 14 minutes.

Playing: Aero, Santa Monica.