Nymphomaniac: Art That You Can Wank To

Shia and Stacey as Jerome and young Joe. Already an iconic image. 

In approaching a Von Trier film, there is a ritual. You cannot be hung over, just have had a meal, or be with anyone else. Literally anyone. The shock value alone will leave you open for public mockery. So it's saturday, it's too cold for the beach. I don't want to get out of my newly bough plush bathrobe from Restoration Hardware that my mom so generously got for me last weekend (thanks mom!) so there was nothing better to do than order Nymphomaniac Parts I and II and binge watch them until my mind was mush and I had lost all feeling in my lady parts and decided to never have sex again as long as I live. But that's typical Von Trier. His as most would say 'misogynistic' treatment of his female characters is a hallmark of most of his films, scratch that, all of his films, even though artfully and masterfully executed. I am not one to label Von Trier a chauvinist. I'd label him a Nazi but that's a whole different story (we all remember what happened at Cannes). Why is he not misogynistic in my opinion? Because throughout the film and afterwards you are very much in an empathetic and completely kindred state with the female protagonist. His films do not show women as victims, though throughout they are subjected to all sorts of abuse, mental, physical, verbal, you name it. His protagonists stand in defiance of said abuse and are always women that know exactly what it is they want and know how to ascertain it. In the same breath I would say that James Cameron par example is a misogynistic director, and if I have to explain why, you might as well stop readying right now. Von Trier even gives Skarsgård a monologue about the vicious double standard that women have to deal with in terms of being aware and in pursuit of sexual pleasure. 

Stacey Martin as young Joe, later played by Charlotte Gainsbourg. I really hope I don't have to explain what's going on in this picture. A character who's 'coming of age' was considerably different from most. 

Anyway on to Nymphomaniac, with the hooplah surrounding the film and the almost laughable marketing campaign that has been lampooned by basically every major film critic, it was a highly anticipated cinematic romp, no pun intended. Ok puns are going to be unavoidable here so just bear with me. 

The film concerns a woman named Joe who has been found beaten in an alley way by Stellan Skarsgård, an intellectual asexual who nurses her back to health while she tells him all about her sordid background as a nymphomaniac. The only difference is that she was a nymphomaniac out of lust not out of need. You see? She wants sex because she fucking wants it bitches, not because it's something she can't control. It's like saying you're an alcoholic because you're thirsty. 

Although this looks like a still from your regular run-of-the-mill porn, it's actually one of the more funny scenes in the film, if not one of the most sexually explicit. Hard to combine the two.

Basically, though Von Trier muse Charlotte Gainsbourg is first billed and in every advert for the film, most of the film concerns her in her younger state, played brilliantly and fearlessly in her debut performance by Stacey Martin. The biggest novelty in this film is the endless parade of surprising supporting players, mainly those of Shia Lebeouf and Jamie Bell. This is where Von Trier really shines as a director because he basically takes a chance on seemingly banal and wasteful actors and transforms them into unbelievably vivid performers. It's also probably Uma Thurman's best role since she was Mia Wallace even though she's on screen for less than 10 minutes. He also does a little tribute to one of his own films Antichrist (2009) shhhhh! I think it's supposed to be a secret. 

Sexually speaking it's actually one of the more easy films to digest aesthetically. I'd much rather watch Shia and Stacey have un-simulated animalistic intercourse than watch some Nicholas Sparks inspired bullshit where Ryan Gosling kisses the back of some girl's neck behind some curtains with a violin playing in the distance, and the rest we are meant to imagine for ourselves. I think Von Trier touches on a very important aspect of sex that we try to ignore as movie-goers. We always want to imagine it as beautiful, electric, and magical; an act that fulfills us, always with love. 

This is Shia's epic apology for well...everything that preceded this film. He's actually a damn good actor. I'm going to burn in hell for saying that. Film buff hell. Where they only show Michael Bay films and demons screeching Tarantino's praises constantly taunt you. 

Because we as the movie-goer and as actual human beings all lack that basically. The universal truth about sex is that it's AWKWARD. It's strange, painful, (not in the way that you think, you perv), unfulfilling, and most of the time lacking what is constantly referred in the film as 'the secret ingredient'; love. Sex is a constant state of learning. Learning what we like, what others like, what we absolutely need and what we absolutely won't ever do. It's a self-discovery more cerebral than we think, and Von Trier manages to capture this by equating it to almost a Zizekian philosophical study in this film, not to say that it's pretentious in the least. There's a beautiful scene where Skarsgård explains the beauty of Bach's compositions by three elements, which Joe (Gainsbourg) equates to three types of lovers that when combined create a 'beautiful tune'. Speaking of which, the use of music is absolutely brilliant in this film. Instead of a prolonged Wagner score (again, ahem...Nazi), that he usually uses, it's a total mix up of some of the most iconic classical music pieces out there. My favorite is when (spoiler alert) Joe is forced to go into sexual-addiction rehab, she has to get rid of anything that reminds her of sex or anything that turns her on. In the background is playing the first movement of Mozart's requiem, as if she's preparing for death, or that a piece of her is dying. It's not exactly subtle, but it's tongue in cheek. (Another pun!). 

Gainsbourg must either really really love working with Von Trier or has some kind of debt that has yet to be repaid because I don't know of any other actress who is able and willing to put herself through as much as she has, and not just in this one film. 

Now, I'm of the belief that Von Trier has probably had sex maybe three times in his life, and perhaps that is why he needed to make Nymphomaniac. It reminds me of a review that I read from Roger Ebert talking about the Peter Greenway film; 8 1/2 Women (2001) where a father and son create a private harem being inspired by the Fellini film, 8 1/2 (1963). He begged the question; how many directors make films about their unspoken sexual fantasies, and the answer is...all of them. Von Trier just took it a step further...as he tends to. And the ending is I mean, absolutely brilliant, and the best exhaltation of a woman's plight I've ever seen. I can't give away more than that, but it's brilliantly perfect. Anyway, I liked it. I recommend it, but again. Approach with caution.

Trailer below: