Light up the Void  

When it appeared on the streets and in magazine pages in 2015, the poster for Gaspar Noé's Love immediately caused a sensation. More than just a promotional image, this close-up, carnal, and direct kiss crystallized all the expectations—and all the controversies—surrounding a film touted as a radical 3D experience of sex and emotions.

Designed by poster artist Laurent Lufroy, the image immediately conveys its intensity. The saturated red, the sweat, the almost suffocating proximity of the bodies: everything contributes to conveying what Noé described as a "romantic and pornographic" work. But beyond the aesthetics, it is the audacity of the gesture that has struck a chord. In a promotional landscape often sanitized, the poster for Love has established itself as a visual manifesto: it doesn't seek to seduce through suggestion, it embraces the direct shock.

In France, the impact was immediate. Several municipalities deemed the image too explicit and demanded its removal from public displays, reigniting the recurring debate on censorship and artistic freedom of expression. Abroad, the press seized upon it as a symbol: that of an auteur cinema that dares to use the promotional machine to provoke as much as to seduce.

Paradoxically, this poster, designed to attract viewers to theaters, has become an independent cultural object, discussed, criticized, and sometimes even appropriated. It has served as a reminder that, in the age of viral campaigns and digital teasers, the film poster can still play a central role in the perception of a film.

Ultimately, the poster for Love didn't just accompany the film's release; it prolonged its scandalous and fascinating effects, becoming an emblem of Gaspar Noé's approach. An image that, ten years later, continues to circulate in the collective imagination as the quintessence of his cinema: excessive, visceral, and impossible to ignore.

In 2015, the poster for Love didn't just shake up France. Abroad too, Gaspar Noé's incandescent kiss, directed by Laurent Lufroy, had an immediate effect.

In the UK, the image was used unfiltered, becoming a powerful marketing tool in art-house cinemas. In the US, where puritanism lurks, several media outlets highlighted its "pornographic" audacity, with some exhibitors preferring a toned-down version for public display. In Italy and Spain, on the other hand, the poster circulated widely, fitting into a tradition more tolerant of eroticism in advertising.

In the international press, the image was hailed as a manifesto: a gesture as direct as Noé's cinema itself. While it was censored in some French cities, elsewhere it became a cult object, fueling the buzz around a film that promised, even before it was seen, to push boundaries.

His name may not mean anything to the general public, but his images are etched in our memories. Laurent Lufroy, a French poster artist, is the creator of the provocative poster for Gaspar Noé's Love, that incandescent red kiss that caused a scandal upon its release in 2015.

Born in 1966, Lufroy has designed over 700 film posters. While he has worked with numerous directors, it is his collaboration with Gaspar Noé that has left a lasting impression. Since Irreversible, he has shaped the filmmaker's visual identity, translating the unsettling power of his films into a single image. For Love, he encapsulates the promise of a film that is both romantic and pornographic in a single, visceral and explicit photograph.

Censored in some cities, adored elsewhere, its poster transcended its purely promotional function to become an independent cultural artifact, debated, analyzed, and reinterpreted. So much so that Lufroy himself found himself propelled to the status of Noé's artistic collaborator, even making a cameo appearance in Love.

Discreet, he champions a handcrafted and sensitive approach to his craft, far removed from the industrial standards of Hollywood studios. But with Love, he reminded us that a poster could still shock, seduce, and contribute to a film's legend. A signature style that, today, stands out as one of the most distinctive in contemporary French cinema.