Nymphomaniac Vols. I and II review: high art or straight pornography, this is one for intrepid film goers only
PORNOGRAPHIC, pretentious, honest. Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac Vols. I and II is just as controversial as you may have heard.
Director: Lars von Trier (Melancholia)
Starring: Charlotte Gainsbourg, Stacy Martin, Stellan Skarsgard, Shia LaBeouf, Jamie Bell, Christian Slater.
Rating: ***
Living on the urge of no return
EVERYTHING you might have heard about this hyper-notorious drama since its controversial unveiling on the festival circuit last year is indeed true.
It is high art. It is straight pornography. It is pretentious to the max. It is honest to a fault.
Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier has made (and messed up) his name many times before with equally confronting fare.
If you’re in any way familiar with his esoteric body of work, you’ll have a clear idea of what’s coming at you with Nymphomaniac.
Divided into two “volumes” that amount to four hours of screen time, the film as a whole amounts to a truly epic, truly testing portrait of a single woman by the name of Joe (Charlotte Gainsbourg).
After being found battered and bruised in an alleyway by a kindly passer-by (Stellan Skarsgard), Joe repays the favour by telling him a story. A complicated story. Her story.
Joe breaks down the tale into titled chapters, each of which illustrates how a lifelong slavery to one’s own sex drive can move beyond impure addiction towards life-threatening affliction.
The explicit nature of many (and I mean, many) scenes do not lose their capacity to shock throughout.
However, the film often seems distracted by a need to provoke any kind of reaction from the viewer. The warm afterglow of some genuinely moving, even poetic sequences can be iced in a heartbeat.
While Gainsbourg and Skarsgard do a great job of keeping Nymphomaniac in the realm of the bearable throughout, performances elsewhere in the cast (hello, Shia LaBeouf!) are worryingly erratic.
Tonally, von Trier sometimes stops directing and just starts letting stuff happen. As a result, the film can shift gears from tender to terrifying to torrid to terrible at any given moment.
Intrepid film goers who can weather the seedier storms that pass across the screen could find themselves awed by an unforgettable cinematic experience.
Everyone else should turn away now and never look back.