(Note: Nymphomaniac has been divided into two “volumes” for U.S. distribution, with each half given a separate limited release. Vol. I opens in St. Louis on April 4.)
In a narrow alleyway dank with snowmelt, a middle-aged woman, Joe (Charlotte Gainsbourg), lies unconscious and bleeding. Older male passerby Seligman (Stellan Skarsgård) discovers and rouses her, but she dissuades him from alerting the authorities. Instead, he brings her to his small flat to recuperate. When Seligman asks about Joe's predicament, she states matter-of-factly that she is wicked and deserving of her fate. He presses her to explain, and she relents, but only if she can start from beginning of her wretched and stupefying tale.
So opens Nymphomaniac, the new feature from Danish provocateur Lars von Trier. For three decades, Von Trier's work has elicited admiration and revulsion in equal measure. The director delights in formal experimentation (almost to the point of parody) and on tweaking audiences with discomfiting images and themes. The latter is conspicuously on display in Nymphomaniac, which includes an abundance of explicit content, up to and including unsimulated sex. Perhaps surprisingly, the film is also an engrossing work of storytelling, not in spite but because of its frank engagement with humankind's sloppiest and most uninhibited act.
Nymphomaniac’s framing narrative lends a fairy tale quality to the story: Joe relates her lifetime of carnal obsession while sipping tea and huddling beneath blankets. The story assumes the shape of an epic erotic memoir by way of the Brothers Grimm. Seligman actually protests the tale's unlikely twists at one point, but Joe admits to preferring resonance to realism. She guides him chronologically through a hyper-sexualized youth, from preschool games to adolescent rebellion to a young adulthood of cruel deceit and sexual overload. Young Joe (Stacy Martin) manages to juggle an endless cavalcade of partners while remaining determinedly aloof.
Two men stand out in Joe's life. The first is her father (Christian Slater), for whom she harbors an affection that brushes up against an Electra complex. The second is Jerôme (Shia LaBeouf), the man who took her virginity and who reappears at various points her life. Despite his loutishness, Jerôme becomes a romantic fixation for Joe. Her sexual compulsions, however, will not abide such sentiment. Joe's mania enslaves her, turning her later years into an era of frenzied desperation and callous calculation. In the pursuit of sensation (any sensation) she is willing to abandon her family, manipulate the innocent, and allow herself to be brutalized in increasingly baroque ways.
For all its luridness, Nymphomaniac is a remarkably witty and erudite film. Von Trier shrewdly employs numerous formal tools—animation, split screens, montages, cutaways, and more—to enliven an otherwise disconsolate story. An eclectic autodidact, Seligman frequently interrupts Joe's tale with insights from topics ranging from angling techniques to organ music. These digressions enrich and amuse, adding a professorial, nearly absurdist gloss to Joe's dire confession.
Like Seligman, Nymphomaniac's stance is not that of the moral scold. The film kindles profound empathy for its protagonist, despite her callous behavior, drawing the viewer into her tale through fascination mingled with pity. As Nymphomaniac comes full circle to that sodden alley, Joe's self-loathing is revealed as both reasonable and abhorrent. The film's shocking ending is merely the brutal punctuation mark to a work that is consistently thoughtful, often caustic, and strikingly sensitive. Simply put, Nymphomaniac is Von Trier's most deeply humanistic feature in nearly twenty years. It was worth the wait.
Opens Friday, April 4 at the Tivoli Theatre (6350 Delmar, 314-727-7271).
