What's 'Love' got to do with anything?

It would be unfair to simply dismiss controversial Argentine filmmaker Gaspar Noe's succinctly titled “Love” as a porn movie with a good budget and artistic lighting.

Strip out the film's numerous 3-D graphic sex scenes — some so un-erotic to the point of eye-glazing — and what remains is a quasi-tragic tale of a doomed romantic triangle with a self-centered, hypocritical and emotionally unsettled young man at the sharpest point.

The plot involves an American in Paris. Murphy (Bronx-born actor Karl Glusman) falls hard for a French beauty named Electra (Aomi Muyock). Her secret fantasy turns out to be a threesome. They secure the cooperation of a willing blonde Omi (Klara Kristin).

Their story is told in a series of jarring, time-shifted sequences.

A lengthy, static shot of Murphy and Electra graphically pleasuring each other begins the movie, then cuts to a baby crying. Murphy now lives with Omi, whom he does not love, but has impregnated. Nonetheless, his continuing obsession with Electra remains all-consuming.

This could work as a solid narrative, except that Glusman exudes little charisma and Muyock seems totally bored. A movie titled “Love” shouldn't feel this impersonal.

Noe clearly isn't interested in sex as eroticism, but as a form of communication between people. Even so, “Love” comes off as an unlikable male-centric tale, redeemed by arresting visual compositions, tracking shots and nimbly scrambled chronological sequences.

Noe's reputation as an in-your-face provocateur of the cinema is cemented here, and he rejoins a growing number of respected directors delving into the once-taboo realm of the sexual senses, among them Michael Winterbottom (“9 Songs”), Lars von Trier (“Nymphomaniac”) and Virginie Despentes (“Baise-Moi”).

For all of Murphy's impassioned speeches about art and artists, “Love” would fit right into the golden age of adult movies (1973-1980), when filmmakers stretched beyond mere skin flicks and campaigned for mainstream acceptance of their “art.”

In the 21st century, because of Noe, Winterbottom and the Internet, they seem to be getting just that.