Nymph()maniac
Directed by:
Lars von TrierScreenplay:
Lars von TrierCinematography:
Manuel Alberto ClaroCast:
Charlotte Gainsbourg, Stellan Skarsgård, Shia LaBeouf, Stacy Martin, Jamie Bell, Connie Nielsen, Mia Goth, Sophie Kennedy Clark, Christian Slater (more)VOD (1)
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Wild and poetic story of a woman’s erotic journey from birth to the age of 50 as told by the main character, the self-diagnosed nymphomaniac, Joe. On a cold winter’s evening the old, charming bachelor, Seligman, finds Joe beaten up in an alleyway. He brings her home to his flat where he tends to her wounds while asking her about her life. He listens intently as Joe over the next 8 chapters recounts the lushly branched-out and multi faceted story of her life, rich in associations and interjecting incidents. (Shear Entertainment)
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Reviews (11)
Interrupted masturbation. There are basically two ways to read this metaphor. 1. Being pulled out from deep fascination with watching the volatile dialogue of an aging cultural man (Seligman) and an impulsive, animal woman (Joe), who describes to him her sexual maturation with an emphasis on earthiness, while he places details full of vaginal secretions in a network of parallels, archetypes and classical art procedures. 2. Interruption of Lars von Trier's directorial masturbation. The third sinner in a bizarre psychoanalytic session is undoubtedly the Danish enfant terrible, who exposes the meanings and his directing method to the viewer. Shia LaBeouf's penis is not the "most explicit" component of Nymphomaniac: Vol. I. The most explicit component is the way in which Trier consistently turns the challenging theme into the ancient genre of Bildungsroman, which, following the example of old texts, reveals in the introduction what the next chapter will be about, what the viewer will learn from it, and with what intention the narrator tells it. A quirk? Certainly. Does it work? Not always. Since there is no point in evaluating the fragments that Trier ingeniously assesses during the ENTIRE narrative. I will just stick to the fact that this public masturbation, which does not avoid excess, but at the same time has a sometimes surprisingly tame and cultured effect on Danish conditions, has my focused attention for the next two hours.
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A very nice ironic comedy of life. There’s no controversy, no implausible fabrication, just life as it is. I like this movie better and better each time I watch it. An utterly irresistible listener could be none other than Stellan Skarsgård, and the young Stacy Martin is sexy in every shot. I must also praise Christian Slater, but the absolute most epic performance is by Uma Thurman, who brought totally absurd theatrics to this setting. The Director's Cut maintains the same dramatic arc in each chapter, but the eroticism is logically more explicit and therefore more believable. And yet, through it all, Delirium remains the most powerful experience, the only chapter without a major sexual motif.
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Lars von Trier is the art-house equivalent of the celebrated trickster William Castle, whose films were always only a fraction of the overall experience without the additional attractions and means of promotion prepared by the master. Von Trier has elevated the contemporary trend of massaging the media long before a film is released to a concept in and of itself, and has raised marketing and PR to the level of art. He took those originally utilitarian tools and made them part of the overall work, where the film is not the objective, but rather the culmination of a single grand performance – in this case, it is a culmination that has been greatly delayed, as Nymph()maniac is divided into two parts and released with a title informing viewers that they will see only the censored and abridged version of the fabled director’s cut. Von Trier and his collaborators are simply masters of packaging and promotion (which is brilliantly evident in the trailer for the second part, which first appears in the closing credits of Volume I and raises grand promises, which of course remain unfulfilled). At the core of von Trier’s work like ambivalence between the cult of the auteur that he has built around himself over the years, as well as the highlighting of the manipulativeness and falsity of art and artists. The director’s latest piece looks like a frank treatise on human sexuality, which clearly is supposed to go against the grain of bourgeois notions of normalcy, but at the same time, it comes across merely as a calculated act, a way to profit magnificently from the age-old adage “sex sells” in today’s ridiculously strait-laced world. Nymph()maniac itself is surprising as a film hypertext, simply a sort of nymphomaniac.wiki, that doesn’t give viewers only text to analyse and interpret, but directly gives them all interpretations and references with citations. The lofty phrase that there is nothing to add to a film because it already has everything is absolutely entirely true this time. It’s as if the aim was to make a film about which there is nothing more to say than the primitive “I liked it/I didn’t like it" (if you don’t want to quote what was said in the film or draw attention to the obvious). So, let’s say that Nymph()maniac is mostly entertaining (particularly in its minor details, such as the brilliant birth sequence), but it’s more often rather overly clever, as it constantly refers to and adores its own narrative. The fourth wall doesn’t get broken here, but is actually set up behind the viewers (just as in the case of browsing the internet, especially social media, where perceptions from individual links and threads immediately disappear in the next text). As a result, the film’s main positive aspect remains the fact that, even though sex has the role of a commodity and an attraction in the project and in the promotion of Nymph()maniac, the narrative doesn’t approach sexuality in an exploitative way, but rather with fondness and empathy, particularly with respect to its potentially more shocking forms presented in the second part. Generally speaking, however, it is absurd, albeit apt, that the labels “provocateur” and “enfant terrible” have been assigned to a filmmaker who, at least in his last two films, hasn’t done anything but simply show themes such as sex, family and relationships in a more sincere, or more cynical, form in comparison with the sentimentality of mainstream and festival midcult films.
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For the moment, some indecision about the latest “controversial” prank by Lars. The individual stylistically different chapters are effective, from the depressive Delirium to the almost grotesque (and the most fun) Ms H., with Uma Thurman. But what really annoyed me was the binding conversation between Gainsbourg and Skarsgård, it feels as if they’re talking at cross purposes all the time. It’s drowning in shallow allegories and metaphors, which Trier shows way too literally on top of that. Some of those allegories are so stupid that I have no choice but to consider them as intentional mockery of the philosophers and intellectuals who love to connect the unconnectable, find meaning where there is none, and find profound truths in the likening of a sexual train trip to fishing. Here they don’t need to look for anything because Trier has found it for them, and everything is so explicitly shown, from the fish in the river to the graphic representation of the golden ratio. I believe that he is now laughing and singing something along those lines. If I’m wrong, he’s gone mad. Let’s see what Volume 2 brings.
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Lars von Trier deserves a lot of credit for daring to film such an uncomfortable topic that everyone’s interested in, but few would find the courage to tackle. Let’s be happy that it was done by a filmmaker with such screenwriting and filmmaking talent. Who else could have gotten Hollywood stars to perform in such an explicit movie, which features hard-core footage even in the edited version for release in cinemas? (maybe Michael Haneke, but that’s about it.) The dialogue, work with the actors, escalation of the scenes, atmosphere… everything works perfectly. Nymph()maniac is a film for adult viewers, but not because of its erotic content. The more you know about sex and the more experience you have, the more you will understand it. It is a psychologically contemplative, serious and sad film, but it is narrated with wit, through metaphorical comparisons. The definition of polyphony is at the heart of the film and the Rammstein déjà vu of Lynch’s Lost Highway gives it some extra flavor. I am curious about the second part and even more curious about the full version, which already has a place reserved on my shelf of essential films.
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