Thursday, March 28, 2024

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Review // Nymphomaniac

First Published:

Above: Charlotte Gainsberg’s Joe interacts with Jamie Bell’s K. Courtesy of Mongrel Media, photo by Christian Geisnaes.

Nymphomaniac hits the screen this weekend. In certain theatres audiences will have a choice of watching just one part of the two-part film. In others, audiences will get to see both Part 1 and 2 – all four hours– with a short intermission in between. This was the way I saw it, on a Friday morning. And I’ll tell you, it’s quite the way to start your day.

Lars Von Trier has been called a lot of things in his time. He’s also called people a lot of things. But despite the cloud of controversy that seems to hang over the Danish director and his films, he continuously manages to bring out new and innovative pieces of work that push the boundaries of the medium.

Nymphomaniac is no different. The third film in his “Depression” trilogy (Antichrist and Melancholia being the others), Nymphomaniac follows Joe, a middle-aged woman who we first meet beaten and left for dead in a back alley. She is discovered by Stellan Skarsgârd’s Seligman, a doddering old shut-in who takes her back to his apartment to revive her. Over the course of a night, Joe conveys to him her life story, all the way up to her appearance in the alley. It is almost like a fairy tale, full of passion, violence and, well…sex. And like a lot of fairy tales, there is the looming suspicion of a big bad wolf waiting at the end.

Part One of the film focuses mainly on the sexual awakening of a young Joe. Spanning her adolescence to her predatory teen years, to the near systematic handling of her addiction as a young professional. It is an often humorous romp, broken in to chapters that chronicle the highlights of her sexual life. Steligman regularly pipes in, pompously equating Joe’s escapades to pieces of literature, music or fly-fishing, which provides a comic break (not to mention breathing room) between each story.

In Part Two things turn darker. As Joe attempts to get a handle on her addiction, a husband and baby enter the picture. Not able to be satisfied by the “usual” methods, Joe turns to seedier outlets. In response, Seligman’s examples go from the humorous to the religious. It is a story of addiction after all, and like all addicts, Joe’s need for a fix expands. But so does her desire to find something else satisfying in life, and that path gives the film a certain hope amongst all the darkness. Joe is a good person, made slave to her addictions, hoping for a shred of redemption from telling her tale.

Of course the thing most people will talk about is the sex. It has already been called “pornographic” by some, and while Von Trier is certainly no stranger to that particular genre (his company Zentropa produced three pornographic films targeted towards women) the label is out of place here. This is not an erotic film, but rather a brutally honest (and yes explicit) look at the life of a sex addict. In fact, whenever the story features the type of coincidence regularly found in a fiction film, Joe apologizes, as if a plot line gets in the way of the film’s actual purpose. While Nymphomaniac certainly features plenty of explicit images, by the end you’ve become so accustomed to them that you rarely blink an eye.

Lost in the giddy chatter about the film’s graphic nudity is the fact that there are some wonderful performances on display. Charlotte Gainsbourg is winning as Joe. Her cold stare and resigned tone are a needed counterpoint to Seligman’s bluster. Stacy Martin is magnetic (if a tad expressionless) as Young Joe. Shia Lebouef – who plays Jerôme the moped-owning man to whom Joe gives her virginity – is delightfully slimy. Christian Slater is surprisingly good as Joe’s nature-loving father, Uma Thurman gives a scene stealing performance as the horrifying Mrs. H, and Jamie Bell makes your skin crawl in an uncredited appearance as K.

Nymphomaniac is also a brilliantly made film. Von Trier is a master of mood. The sound design in the opening minutes sets you on edge and while the pace slows, you never find yourself glancing around the theatre. The dialogue is witty and intriguing, and the production design is beautiful. The episodic structure, broken up by title cards, recalls a sort of bizarro Wes Anderson and injects the film with a storybook whimsy. And any film that features Rammstein, Steppenwolf and Bach on the same soundtrack scores a point in my book.

All of this wraps up in to a big…something. Von Trier certainly has some issues when it comes to sex, especially female sexuality (one sees him in Seligman throughout, opining happily upon Joe’s misfortunes). Nevertheless he has created a work that takes you out of your comfort zone, and makes you think, so for that he must be commended. I think. I’d watch it again to consolidate my opinion, but…once was enough.

Reviewed by Evan Arppe.

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