In Love, produced in collaboration with Gary Hillberg, Tracey Moffatt uses the editing technique she had used for Lips (1999) and Artist (2000). The work consists of a montage of extracts from Hollywood films from the 1940s to the present day. The sequences are linked together as though they were a trailer for a film, spanning various cinematographic genres: film noir, adventure, love, drama, action and comedy. Tracey Moffatt renders the editing dynamic by using a typography worthy of a horror film for the title of her work and through the choice of a modern soundtrack that clashes with the images, but also by accelerating and colouring certain shots. The artist explores the various facets of love and desire as they are captured by cinema. The result is playful, captivating and sarcastic all at once, and sometimes quite frightening in terms of the characters' relationship to desire. The video runs through the various phases of a love story, with the first part of the work consisting of romantic scenes and on-screen kisses. However, quite quickly the passion fades with Jack Nicholson's words “I don't feel anything anymore,” making way to more violent scenes, tinged with hate. Tracey Moffatt explores the conventions of Hollywood cinema and deciphers the sentimental relationship between a man and a woman in an ironic way: passionate love scenes, promises, insults, slaps, tears, accusations, excuses, threats and slamming doors. All of these false emotions, isolated from their narrative context, are shown here purely for their dramatic dimension and accentuate the comic side of the editing. Tracey Moffatt presents a sceptical view of the couple and of love. It is a modern fairy-tale that calls into question the famous saying: “they lived happily ever after...”

Priscilia Marques