Some time in the middle of Gaspar Noé’s new movie Love, star Karl Glusman ejaculates all over the camera. It’s a sight gag because the movie is in 3D, and probably the only instance of an anatomical closeup in the whole, sex-filled 135-minute movie. Generally, Love is more focused the bonds of its love-triangle-trapped characters Murphy (Glusman), Electra (Aomi Muyock), and Omi (Klara Kristin). When they are depicted having sex, as they frequently are onscreen, whomever’s having it is almost always in the same frame at all times. They are often performing actual sex acts, like the three-minute hand job/finger bang that opens the film.

“My biggest dream is to make a movie that truly depicts sentimental sexuality…Why haven’t we seen this in cinema?” asks Murphy, Noé’s film student protagonist. More than virtually any other narrative feature that came before it, Love honors the cruciality of sex in relationships (especially new relationships). It presents the fragmented recollections of Murphy’s doomed relationship with Electra with a reflective sentimentality that comes close to wallowing at times but, nonetheless, I found extremely moving and relatable. “Why is the measure of love loss?” asked Jeneatte Winterson’s narrator in her novel Written on the Body. Noé (whose other movies include Irréversible and Enter the Void) doesn’t ponder this as a question, he accepts it as a fact: the measure of love is loss in this movie and it hurts like hell.

The cuts between the film’s long takes are signaled by 12 frames of black, creating a half-second blink that approximates “how your brain works when you dream or you think of the past,” as Noé explained to me earlier this week in the office of Love’s publicist. I found him to be gravely serious as we discussed hardcore sex on screen, Glusman’s “strong” dick, and indulgence. An edited and condensed transcript of our chat is below.

Gawker: I realized when watching Love for a second time that I haven’t watched this much heterosexual sex in one sitting since I was a teenager, since VHS.

Gaspar Noé: When they ask me what I think of pornography, I say, “Since it moved to digital, I don’t get excited in any way by computers.” I think they are cold and I think images of sex you see on these websites are colder and colder and unemotional. I really don’t relate to that. I think my last joy of watching sex was on a TV screen with VHS.

I also wonder what it does to sexuality to take in so many sex acts with so many different people in a single sitting.

The worst thing is that erotic images actually are disappearing from our context in Western society. There were things in the ‘60s and ‘70s that were much sexier than nowadays. You had magazines like Playboy or Penthouse or Mayfair. But also, there were all these erotic movies with Sylvia Kristel, with Laura Gemser that could really turn you on as a young boy. But nowadays, I don’t know what the young kids can masturbate on. When I watch those images that you can Google very easy, any kid can Google them easy, they’re cold and cruel and mostly about dominance. They’re not linked to any emotions. People never kiss, girls don’t have pubic hair, guys are all are strong as firemen with tattoos. They’re not relatable for most people, for most girls or for most boys. It’s weird how sexual positive emotions have been disconnected from the movie industry.

What spoke to me about this movie is that it’s invested in the importance of sex to a relationship, especially early on as a method of fostering love.

For me, it’s the closest film I’ve done to real life—at its best and its worst. Maybe the most painful moments in my life were related to sentimental problems and the most joyful were linked to sentimental joys. The love/passion films should be a genre by itself. Why are there so many spy movies, so many bank robbery movies, so many horror movies, sentimental comedies, but not movies reproducing what love is? Everybody’s obsessed with it. Whether you are straight, gay, or whatever else, everybody is obsessed with having an ultimate connection with another person. I’ve seen some of my friends ready to commit suicide because of an unexpected breakup with their girlfriend.

The Murphy character raises a similar question in the movie—“My biggest dream is to make a movie that truly depicts sentimental sexuality…Why haven’t we seen this in cinema?” But I think the movie answers that question itself through its marketing [like this site that people can use to send messages in virtual cum]: It seems that actual sex in a movie does distract people.

There’s nothing in this movie that haven’t seen. Maybe most people haven’t taken the risk to test themselves in a swinger’s club. Most couples haven’t had a situation in which they bring a transvestite to test how strong their love is. All the rest of the movie is an experience that people know but is not portrayed on a movie screen for reasons that are beyond my understanding. I think they are more abstract. We live in a patriarchal society in which whoever’s in power to control the sexual life of the other people will do it. But then it happens in an abstract way. There are no legal issues that prevent you from shooting movies like mine. It’s more that people are afraid of showing that or commercializing that.

In the end, the only [onscreen] sex you can see is that which is linked to the sex genre, it’s almost coming from a separate planet. The idea is on that planet, people have sex. Those Martians can have sex and we can show them with a telescope, but in real life, we should not show what us, the humans, do in our lives. Maybe most people are afraid of being cheated. That’s like a silent obsession most people have. The worst reviews I had for this movie were coming from men that were very hateful to Karl and to me. They don’t want to promote a movie in which their girlfriends or wives or daughters could be excited by the young guy and his strong dick. It’s a very reptilian reaction to the movie, because they feel danger from a movie that might excite the object of their desire.

Maybe this movie poses a specific challenge to heterosexual men because of the way you shot it, where the two people are almost always in the same frame at the same time and there aren’t really closeups. You see much more of his body than hers—there isn’t any visible labia, even.

I did not want to do images that are not linked to your real life. When you have sex in real life, you are mostly kissing the person, and you are not watching their genitals. I was not obsessed with genitals. I just thought it was good to have that funny [cum] shot in the middle of the movie...

Because of the 3D?

...Yeah, because of the 3D. But also, there is that scene in which he’s giving head to her, but the problem is it’s less visual. The way the female body is, the genitals are internal. It’s more graphic the other way around. It’s not that I didn’t want it. I don’t have bigger issues when it comes to shoot a face, a hand, or genitals. I shot some images of Electra’s magic triangle, but they would not fit in the movie. I removed them because they made no sense, and also I didn’t want the movie to be linked to that genre of videos you can find on the net.

How important to you was it for Murphy to have a good dick? [Note: Gusman’s dick is a very good dick.]

As a heterosexual man, I was far more obsessed in the casting of the girl initially, and also because of the nature of the movie, it was harder to find a girl or girls who’d be willing to do the movie. In France, every single friend I have wanted to be in the movie and show his dick. Guys are always proud to show their dick, whether it’s small or big. I did not ask [Gusman] to get naked in front of me before the first day of shooting me. I just asked a girl who knew him, “How is he?” She said, “He’s OK. Don’t worry, it’s gonna be fine.” I discovered his dick on the first day of shooting.

Besides that, I would say that the movie’s mostly about the energy of the people who are playing, and also their charisma and their voices and their joy. The three of them are extremely charismatic so that made the movie. Also, we were improvising the dialogue. We were improvising everything. So, Karl didn’t stop proposing ideas. From behind the camera, I was whispering to them to say things, and then I would cut my voice in the editing room so they would just say things that came to my mind at the very last moment.

Was any of the sex simulated?

Yes, of course. But I don’t want to get into those issues because, for example, I thought it was unarousing to know that in that great movie Blue Is the Warmest Color, they were announcing that the sex was fake. Sex is one of the best parts of life, so I wanted to make a movie about love addiction and show its carnal aspects. How it is cooked is secondary, what counts is the result. When people are kissing...when it’s not needed, it’s not needed. When it’s needed to be done, you can do it for real or it can be cheated. The rape scene in Irréversible was not real. Whatever, I would say it’s not important to say what is, what is not.

When you’re doing something meticulous—and I know it wasn’t autobiographical—where is your head regarding indulgence? Do you wonder, “Am I indulging myself too much?” or is it just, “I am an artist and I’m free...”

Oh I am not an artist. I make movies from time to time. My father is a painter. He is an artist. Some people can claim they are artists when they do great music, but I would rather say it’s a movie that I think is close to life as I’ve seen it. It personal, but it’s a group [effort], because it’s a mix of what I’ve experienced and what my friends have experienced.

Both times I saw it, the biggest laugh happened when they’re discussing baby names and Murphy suggests “Gaspar.”

Usually the moment when people laugh the most is when the girl says she’s 17 soon, and he says, “I fucking love Europe.” The age of consent in France is 15. It was not supposed to be funny, but I would say I’m a joyful person. I make jokes in life. Karl is a very joyful, playful person. Movies, even when you have a story, they end up being a documentary on the charisma of the people you are filming, especially if the dialogue is improvised. In the end, the movie is kind of a comedy now, but it was not meant to be that.

Love is in select theaters today.