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)Plots(1)
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)
Not completely... but still very promising. Humorous and dark stories from life are sometimes shocking, as some comparisons can be. Von Trier by the way explains the secret of good fly fishing. Maybe it’s due to heavy producer’s cutting, but Nymph()maniac doesn’t (yet) seem like an over the top erotic movie, but a study of female sexuality presented in a fresh and entertaining way. The audience at the movie theater laughed at the right places (situations that are funny if they aren’t happening to you) and jumped in shock several times, but during the nympho scenes, nobody was offended, on the other hand they probably weren’t disappointed, either. The acting can’t be faulted at all. A top-notch cast dominated surprisingly by the young Stacy Martin (who looks exactly like a classmate from college) rather than by Charlotte Gainsbourg, but it’ll probably be the other way round in part two. In the supporting roles, Uma Thurman draws attention with her flawless creation of a perfect wife and Christian Slater in the role of the kind daddy. So far intriguing and it looks like it’s going to get even more so. Zwei Bilder nur ein Rahmen... Ein Körper doch zwei Namen... Zwei Dochte eine Kerze... Zwei Seelen in einem Herzen...
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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 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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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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Trier listened to talk about how brilliant he was for so long that he finally believed it and tried to create the most complex film of all time. In it, he has it out with everyone and comments on absolutely everything, thereby serving up an incredible load of motifs, images, metaphors, and subliminal messages that is, at its core, cheaper than paid sex for one time... (Volume 2)
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