There is something totally unforgettable about Joe’s story,
which starts when she first discovered her ‘cunt’ at the age of two and a half
years. Her story is addressed to Seligman, a strange lonely middle aged Jew
that finds Joe lying beaten and bleeding in a dark alleyway at the rear of his
flat. He takes the young women there to tend her wounds. Its while she is lying
in bed recuperating she starts to tell him about her life that consists of a
series of promiscuous sexual adventures. Nymph()maniac (2013) is Danish
director Lars von Triers third and final film in his brilliant “Depression
Trilogy” which was proceeded by Antichrist
in 2009 and Melancholia
in 2011.
This new film ‘a
bizarre exploration of sexuality in all its twisted glory’[1] is
ingeniously divided into two volumes with five chapters in the first volume and
three in the second. There is no real reason given as to why Joe is so sexually
active from a very early age. Her normal loving relationship with her father
gives no clues but at 12 years old she experiences an epileptic episode that
transforms it self into a sexual occurrence. Her first real sexual experience
is with Jerome to whom she gives up her virginity. This one event leads to
compulsive sex with literately thousands of different men. Her appetite for
even more intense experiences leads her to engage a professional sadist called
K. This is the only episode in the film
that tends to make you want to look away - but you don’t!
A self diagnosed nymphomaniac, Joe’s explanation for her
actions is that she must be a bad person, but she refuses to admit to Seligman
that her sexually explicit existence is immoral and repudiates the idea of
changing her life style, preferring her way of life to a life of hypocrisy.
The character of Joe is divided between newcomer Stacy
Martin and von Trier regular Charlotte Gainsbourg (whose rendering of Hey
Joe over the final credits is up there with the Hendrix version).
Stellen Skarsgard plays Seligman, far more convincing than he was in The
Railway Man (2013). Shia LaBeouf, looking a little lost at times plays
the virginity snatching Jerome and the dominant S&M dispensing K is creepily
portrayed by Jamie Bell.
 |
| The cast. |
Not a film for everyone, but then none of this director’s
films is to every body’s taste. It does not have the shock value of Antichrist but it does have an array of
penis types, sadomasochism,
oral and anal sex and threesomes! Skarsgard denies that the film is
pornographic and says you would be hard pressed to find anything to masturbate
over! My honest opinion is that if, like
me, you love von Triers contribution to the cinematic landscape then your going
to love this film, or you could wait for the promised five and a half hour hard-core
version!
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