NYMPHOMANIAC. Provocative word, proactive title. What else would one expect of Lars Von Trier?!
Von Trier has been trotting out provocative, audacious, infuriating, films for the past thirty years, and with few exceptions, the films have been at least challenging.
His muse on his two previous pictures, ‘Antichrist’ and ‘Melancholia’, Charlotte Gainsbourg, again steps up to the plate and bats a brilliant innings as Joe, the nymphomaniac of the title.
The picture opens with her battered body being discovered in a back alley by an old bloke who takes her to his nearby home and gives her succor.
In response to his questioning as to how she came be in this predicament, Joe recounts the story of her life in a number of erotically charged chapters.
Ironically, the man, Seligman, a well read cultural Jew, is a virgin.
The raconteur begins with a chapter titled The Compleat Angler, and recounts pre pubescent Joe’s revelation of sliding on her stomach on a slippery floor stimulating her genitals.
It also touches on her relationship with her adored doctor daddy and her ice maiden mother.
On reaching puberty and peer pressured by bosom buddy, B, the two teens board a train and literally “fly” fish, betting who can seduce the most men during the trip. The trophy for these Lolitas is a bag of lollies.
The second chapter is named for the man who deflowered Joe, Jerome. Joe propositioned Jerome as a callow youth who perfunctorily had sex with her in a concise arithmetic then later hired her with a view to use her as his office whore.
As much as Joe enjoys sex, she is the one who chooses who she is going to sleep with and Jerome is rebuffed.
This element of her sexuality is a refrain throughout the film. Even when her sex addiction creates uncontrollable urges, it remains her choice to initiate and venture into trysts. Joe is both empowered by and a victim of her vagina.
Sexuality is such a fundamental aspect of our being and Von Trier uses it as a fulcrum to support wide ranging philosophical, artistic, psychological examination, a gamut of ideas, that are explored, discussed and disseminated.
Music, mathematics, myth, marriage, monogamy, masochism, machismo, and masturbation are just some of the myriad meanderings this movie moots.
Profane, profound, playful, NYMPHOMANIAC performs on many levels and succeeds most of the time. Its four hour running time in two volumes sags occasionally but overall it rewards.
Charlotte Gainsbourg is utterly engaging as Joe in her mature years, as is Stacy Martin who portrays the teens and twenties Joe .
Von Trier alumni assembled include Stellan Skarsgard as Seligman, Willem Dafoe as a shady businessman, Udo Kier as a waiter who witness Joe’s spoon as speculum spectacular in a posh restaurant,and Jean Marc-Barr as a debtor gentleman.
Transforming from popcorn to quasi porn, Shia LaBeouf plays Jerome. It’s a role that gives him scope to show his range and he acquits himself surely playing surly cock-a hoop to concerned cuckold with equal aplomb.
Jamie Bell is “purely belter” as a fastidious fetishist who’s flogging finesse fuels feelings that force Joe to forsake her family.
In a harrowing sequence that illustrates the carnage her carnal capers can cause, Uma Thurman plays the wife of one of young Joe’s lovers who leaves home for her. It’s a heartwrenching hysteria where she takes her children to see the whoring bed that has bewitched their father, her husband.
The incident happens when Joe’s concept of Love is just lust with jealousy added. This idea changes as she matures and is herself smitten and discovers that love brings an added dimension to sex.
NYMPHOMANIAC’s climactic sequence begins with an observation of a tea stain on the wall. Joe had earlier flung her cup in annoyance and frustration of Seligman. She sees in the stain the image of a particular pistol, a Walther PPK, the firearm famously favoured by Ian Fleming’s James Bond. Joe is a Fleming fan and berates her well-read rescuer for not having read him.
The story of The Gun has Joe as a black clad chignon cheveux action interrogator. It’s a glimpse of Charlotte channeling Modesty Blaise! Delicious!
From screenplay through cinematography, performance and production design, NYMPHOMANIAC is event cinema for adults.
