During the heyday of Japan's "pink films" (cinematic porn) in the 1960s and '70s, directors were given free rein over their pictures as long as they included at least one sex scene per reel. For the late Koji Wakamatsu, perhaps the genre's most famous exponent, this was an opportunity to smuggle experimental techniques and revolutionary politics into what were meant to be straightforward smut films.
Wakamatsu is one of the filmmakers thanked in the end credits of "Love," a spectacularly explicit romantic drama by the French-Argentine auteur Gaspar Noe. It's a hat-tip from one provocateur to another: When Noe's movie screened out of competition at Cannes Film Festival last year, the furor almost rivaled the one that greeted Wakamatsu's "Secrets Behind the Wall" at the Berlinale in 1965.
The conversations surrounding "Love" were rather less high-minded, though. Audiences at Cannes were less interested in discussing the politics of Noe's opus than the "ick" factor of its triumphant money shot: an aerial view of an ejaculating penis filmed in stereoscopic 3-D.