by
Julien Faddoul
** (2 stars)
wd – Lars
von Trier
ph – Manuel
Alberto Claro
pd – Simone
Grau
ed – Morten
Højbjerg (Vol. I), Molly Marlene Stensgaard (Vol. II)
cos – Manon
Rasmussen
p – Louise
Vesth, Marie Cecilie Gade, Peter Aalbæk Jensen
Cast: Charlotte
Gainsbourg, Stellan Skarsgård, Stacy Martin, Shia LaBeouf, Christian Slater, Uma Thurman, Sophie Kennedy Clark,
Connie Nielsen, James Northcote, Hugo Speer, Jamie Bell, Willem Dafoe, Mia
Goth, Michaël Pas, Jean-Marc Barr, Udo Kier
There is a
moment in Nymphomaniac (Vol. II to be
precise) where director Lars von Trier has his titular heroine Joe, in an
outstanding illustration of neglect, leave her sitter-less son alone at home at
1:00am so she can go satisfy her sexual hunger. Her son navigates his way out
of his cot and climbs atop the edge of Joe’s apartment balcony, all the while
Lascia ch'io pianga by Handel plays on the soundtrack. This moment directly
insinuates the opening of Lars von Trier’s previous film Antichrist (2009). This moment also certifies two things: A) That
Lars von Trier is, unless all my acumen fails me, hilarious and B) that he,
more than any other filmmaker, will do everything in his ability and aptitude
to confront, disaffect and stroke his audience, including being, for all
intents and purposes, hilarious.
Make no
mistake, Nymphomaniac is a comedy. In
fact, Nymphomaniac is one long,
4-hour joke with a punchline as funny as anything Mr von Trier could have
concocted. The film begins with Joe (played by Stacey Martin as a girl and by
Charlotte Gainsbourg as a woman) being taken in by Seligman (Stellan Skarsgård),
an intellectual bachelor who finds her beaten-up in an alleyway. Over the
course of the night she relates to him her entire sexual history and what led
her to the point of which he found her. For this reason, although the film is
being theatrically released in two volumes, this review will attune with my
belief that it should be viewed as one 4-hour whole, and that reviewing two
halves of the movie seems like a fruitless exercise with no discernable
benefit.
Typical of
Mr von Trier, Joe’s story is broken-up into 8 chapters – a Fibonacci number –
beginning with her discovery of the capabilities of her vagina and her
realization that love is counterfeit. By the time she reaches her late-teens
she has routine sexual encounters with a minimum of 8 people a night. The most
crucial of these partners is Jerome (Shia Labeouf, sporting an accent that was
untraceable for this reviewer) who would later become the father of the
aforementioned son. Like a lot of Mr von Trier’s films, it is unspecific about
when and where it is set. Let’s say, Europe-land.
Aside from
Joe and Jerome, each chapter contains, for the most part, a fresh set of
characters. The best of these is chapter 3, “Mrs H”, in which Joe plays the
part of a home-wrecker and spends the night dealing with the scorned wife
(played by a ferocious and riotous Uma Thurman). The most tedious chapter is
the one straight after, “Delirium”, which is in black and white and deals with
Joe’s relationship with her sick father (Christian Slater). Riotous really is
the description for most of what goes on in Nymphomaniac.
There is a scene in a restaurant where Jerome bets Joe she can’t fit 5 spoons
into her vagina. Well, she does, much to the confusion of their waiter (von
Trier regular Udo Kier).
This film
is at its most illuminating, however, during the scenes between Ms Gainsbourg
and Mr Skarsgård. These a more that mere frames. It is here that Mr von Trier immortalizes
what can acutely be detected through his entire oeuvre: the gross disharmony of
what we consider intellectually moral with what is primal and natural. Seligman
is a man of digression and each story point Joe gives leads to a philosophical
discussion in the hope of dissection. These include Fibonacci numbers, fly-fishing,
James Bond, Bach, cake forks, the complexity of pedophilia and more.
But here
comes the paradox: when the final moments of the film are revealed to us, it
becomes apparent that these conversations have been a set-up to one long dirty
joke by Mr von Trier and it is both hilarious and depressing at the same time.
Nymphomaniac is the third film in Mr von Trier
“Depression Trilogy”, after Anticrhist
(2009) and Melancholia (2011),
and is the best of the three because it’s the most unruly. Despite this, I
still believe that the film takes too many unnecessary longueurs. I felt this
about the “Delirium” chapter as well as chapter 6 “The Eastern and the Western
Church (The Silent Duck)” in which Joe habitually visits a mysterious man whom
she seeks to beat her up (Jamie Bell). But again, Mr von Trier seems aware of
this. During one of Seligman’s pontifications, Joe intrudes and says, “I think
this has been one of your weakest digressions”.
Cinematically, Nymphomaniac is also one of Mr von
Trier’s least interesting ventures, relying on a great deal of random cutaways
and dealing with – Ms Thurman aside – some surprisingly fundamental
performances from its vast cast. But it is the philosophy of what is onscreen
that is so fascinating here. Like Bunuel or Herzog, Mr von Trier challenges and
tickles with equal quota.
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