Nymph()maniac

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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[1] James Mottram The List

The Railway Man.

Eric Lomax and Takashi Nagase.

The consequences of war, or should I say the consequences of politicians sending young boys to war, is clearly portrayed in the former Royal Signals officer Eric Lomax’s autobiography published in 1995. It tells of his experiences as a prisoner of war during WW2 following the fall of Singapore and how he and many other prisoners were forced to help build the Burma Railway under the command of the Japanese military, a railway that cost the lives of 100000 men. For the second time The Railway Man has been adapted for the screen, the first in 1995 for Television starred John Hurt and now we have the feature film with Colin Firth ably taking the role of the older Lomax with Jeremy Irvine (War Horse (2011), Great Expectations (2012)) portraying the younger version. The story is told with intelligent use of flashbacks combining Eric’s current life with his time in Thailand building the railway. 

Early days building the railway.

Directed by Australian writer Jonathan Teplitzky and adapted for the screen by Frank Cottrell Boyce and Andy Paterson it is a remarkable account of how one human being can survive torture and extreme deprivation at the hands of another. The story starts in Scotland in 1980 when Lomax meets a Canadian nurse called Patti Wallace, a woman 17 years his junior, who after leaving his first wife married her in 1983. It’s not long before Patti (Nicole Kidman looking a touch more dowdy than she did in The Paperboy (2012)) realises that her husband has been psychologically damaged by his time in the camp and has severe problems coping with the after effects of his treatment there. But its not until she manages to get fellow veteran Finley (played by a miss cast Stellan Skarsgard) to tell her (via flashbacks) what went on during Eric’s time as a captive of the Japanese that she begins to appreciate the problems and nightmares he is suffering. Finley also explains to Pattie that the only way Eric is going to get any rest bite from his on going torment is to go back to the scene of his traumatic experiences and confront his torturer Japanese officer Takashi Nagase (Hiroyuki Sanada/Tanroh Ishida) who Finley has discovered is still alive.

 

Patti Lomax with Nicole Kidman.

The movie goes some way to explain the meaning of what we now call post traumatic stress disorder, how it comes about and its aftermath. Lomax suffered for 40 years of his life, almost destroying his second marriage and making his own life a miserable existence for a good amount of his life time. Not helped by the ridicules British stiff upper lip scenario and the code of silence that prevailed even between comrades who shared the horrors of war.  As one critic opined ‘this isn’t a war film but one about making peace with the past’[1]

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[1] Kate Stables Sight and Sound.

King of Devils Island.

Prison dramas normally make for gutsy viewing and the fictionalised retelling of a violent uprising by the young male inmates at the Bastoy Reform School in 1915 is just that. Located on the Bastoy Island in the Oslo Fjord in Norway the reformatory, which was originally open in 1900, is depicted in Marius Holst’s 2010 Norwegian film King of Devils Island as a cold, hard desolate place for ‘maladjusted boys’ who with time and discipline will turn into ‘an honourable, humble, useful Christian boy’ but not before repeated beatings and in some cases sexual abuse. It was this abuse that sparked the rebellion amongst the inmates.

The central character of the film is the 17-year-old Erling, played by newcomer Benjamin Halstead, who arrives on the island accompanied by a younger vulnerable boy called Ivar (Magnus Langlete). It’s rumoured that Erling has killed someone therefore identifying him as a candidate for the prison governor’s introductory lecture! But the young inmates biggest problem is the housefather Brathen, a violent sexual predator who can’t keep his ‘hands’ off Ivar.

Erling and .......

........Ivar arrive on the Island.

Yes, it is pretty obvious what happens, but it’s conveyed in a way that keeps you on the edge of your seat. Bold widescreen cinematography gives you a vista that is both bleak and cold. The acting is first rate and really makes you empathise, not only the boys but also Hakon the governor (Stellan Skarsgard) with all his obvious emotional complexities. Apparently the film fuelled an intense public debate in Norway forcing the country to re-examine part of its buried history. A good intelligent movie that’s puts you in mind of Scum (1979) and Lord of the Flies (1963) and I warn you like these two films it’s a dour watch!  

An attempted escape, but will it succeed?