The first 3D porn movie ever screened in official selection at the Cannes Film Festival has been sold to nearly 40 markets including Australia.
Gaspar Noé’s Love stars Karl Glusman as a young American reminiscing over an intense affair he had in Paris with Electra (Aomi Muyock). Her suggestion of a threesome with Omi (Klara Kristin) ultimately unravels their relationship.
“Its sexually explicit content, which might pose a problem in a handful of territories such as the US, does not appeared to have deterred buyers,” Screen Daily drily reported.
Some reviewers rated the film as less scandalous and daring than the Argentinian-born French director’s previous efforts such as Irreversible (2002) and Enter The Void (2009).
“Even though one critic labelled Love the director’s tamest film, it hardly is that, considering the numerous, extremely graphic sex scenes in which nothing is left to the imagination,” Deadline.com’s Pete Hammond wrote.
“No one is storming out of Love screenings in disgust — no one seems shocked. The bigger scandal this year was the security guards kicking women off the red carpet for not wearing heels. You gotta love this town.”
Stripping out the sex scenes, The Hollywood Reporter opined, "what's left is a wistful, some might say sappy story about heartbreak, made with impressive cinematic elan but somewhat shallow emotional depth, for all its tragic posturing."
AIchemy will release it in the US either as an NC-17 or without a rating. Hammond says it will be interesting to see which art house bookings it gets or if it has to cross over to mainstream 3D-equipped theatres to make the gimmick work.
Wild Bunch will release the film in France and it sold the title to a bunch of markets including the UK, Germany, Brazil, Korea, Japan and Mexico.
Screen Daily misreported the Australian buyer as Monsters Films/Exile, meaning Monster Pictures and Exile Entertainment. The deal was confirmed to IF by Monster's Neil Foley, who said he is looking at a theatrical release and will provide info soon. Monster will co-distribute with Exile, which was launched in March by Melbourne-based Alexi Ouzas.
Monster Pictures released Dutch director Tom Six’s horror film The Human Centipede 2 (Full Sequence), which was initially refused classification then given an R18+ rating after minor cuts.
The distributor is launching The Human Centipede 3 in cinemas in late June. The film opens in the US this weekend. "A caldron of unspeakable acts and unpalatable language, The Human Centipede 3 takes the bottom-feeding standards of its previous chapters (released in 2010 and 2011) to new lows of debasement," huffed The New York Times critic Jeanette Catsoulis.
"While the original film displayed a smidgen of humanity that ameliorated its vile conjoining of three luckless tourists into a single digestive tract, subsequent outings have yielded only more victims and fewer reasons to care."