Nymph()maniac: Volume 2

The second part of Nymphomaniac starts as boring to give you a punch in the gut at the ending. Shia LaBeouf delivers an excellent performance, and Stellan Skarsgård’s acting remains solid. All the actors are without reproach, actually. We even see more of Charlotte Gainsbourg instead of her younger self played by Stacy Martin. Charlotte makes quite an impression with her nipples, which I’ll probably never forget. You don’t get to see nipples as pert as hers in movies much, if you see them at all. What is worse, however, is that Lars von Trier continued his episodic, meaningless narration, which is boring in places, interesting in others and way too philosophical in yet other moments. And this keeps going on until the moment when Stellan convinces you of something you would be better not knowing. After these almost four hours, the ending is a blow to a soul of every feeling viewer. I’m giving this film one star because Lars filmed it quite skillfully. It can’t be denied that he’s a good director, but all the rest in this film is pure suffering. (12/10/2014)

We left the comedy part behind us and now we get the sad part. So the viewer isn’t entertained, but he’s still curious. Of course, there’s a touch of S+M in the movie, but it’s an act of despair, not lust, and so the controversy somehow fades. The story of Fido’s life was certainly worth telling and I really liked that scene with the tree. The worst tasteless slap in the face of the whole story is the ending which more or less ruins the catharsis and doesn’t shock but revolts. It seems very forced. Or the loose ends with Jamie Bell and Willem Dafoe. Is it Lars’s work or the censor’s? Shame, maybe the director’s cut will make more sense. Hey Joe. (01/19/2014)

The first two-thirds of the second Nymphomaniac retain the power of the first film and, with the sadistic “Mr. K”, increases the audience’s discomfort to risky heights. But the final, “criminal” third raises the suspicion that Lars von Trier either didn’t know how to appropriately and meaningfully finish his work or he was overruled by the producers, who aimed for the biggest box-office profits possible (the absence of Shia LaBeouf in the role of Jerome, while all the others actors reprised their roles, suggests that the last third was filmed as an afterthought, after his contract expired). Finally, the last scene of the film is a bad joke, a slap with a glove full of coins that Nymphomaniac earned also by being split into two parts. In said scene, Trier completely (and unnecessarily) destroyed Stellan Skarsgård’s Seligman, a very important character for the story. (01/16/2014)

Simply, the second half of the film, which by the way lasts two hours, is even more tedious and boring than the first part, and it has a strange ending, a strange overall culmination, which will leave you feeling like you missed something. I'm not particularly enthusiastic about this double film. It's not badly directed, but at the same time, it doesn't give the viewer much either. The pseudo controversies are sometimes apparent, but it's part of the film and the subject matter. It's just long and actually quite empty. (05/07/2014)

My enthusiasm from the first Nymphomaniac can be summed up with the fact that I didn’t run to the cinema for the second part and waited for it without much interest for four months. And with similar lack of interest I spent two hours watching it, during which I looked at my watch more often that it would be healthy. There is something there, of course, Trier doesn’t make stupid empty stuff, and the climax is quite vibrant, but this time, the rules of his game didn’t work on me. (04/12/2014)