Nymphomaniac: Vol. I

Denmark's notorious infant terrible, who used despair and unflinching self-mutilation as his canvas in his last few films, had already sparked a great deal of controversy and intrigue when the title of his next venture was announced. Nymphomaniac would deal with the bare-it-all, spare-no-details chronicle of a woman's sexual awakening, adventuring, and ultimate degradation. Lars von Trier, who some have accused of misogyny and making movies purely to shock, caught a good bit of flak for daring to make a movie that can be considered a woman's sexual autobiography, and most expected it to be a truly explicit film that could be considered little more than pornography.

Most people underestimate Lars von Trier. While he does have his peculiarities, he is first and foremost an artist. And Nymphomaniac, his third outing with his muse Charlotte Gainsbourg, is perhaps his most expansive work to date. Split into two films and covering several decades, von Trier has concocted a Homeric tale of sound and fury and all sorts of sexual depravity. But this film is not designed to arouse, to titillate. Far from it; the sex is clinical, detached, almost boring at times.

As I said, this is a woman's odyssey. This woman is Joe (Gainsbourg), who is discovered beaten within an inch of her life in a back alley by a lonely bachelor named Seligman (Stellan Skarsgard). Joe demands Seligman not call for assistance, instead accompanying the man back to his apartment for a cup of tea. And after she gets patched up, Joe finds Seligman a willing listener, a father confessor of sorts, and begins to spin a tale of promiscuity that would drive most men wild but intrigues Seligman in a much more philosophical manner. Joe's story starts from her discovery of her own sexuality at the age of two, and by the time she came to barely legal age (here played by Stacy Martin) and how she begins exploring her hypersensual nature. She abandons her virginity by bedding a motorhead (a curiously accented Shia LaBeouf), then even playing games of one-upmanship with her best friend and fellow sex addict (one scene features the girls competing to see who can bang the most guys on a train to win a bag of chocolates). As Gainsbourg's present-day Joe explains herself, Seligman picks out details and compares her sexual deviancy to the most obscure things, from fishing lures to baroque tritones. Von Trier is a very distinct writer, always seeming to verge on the arcane in his observations on the human condition, and here he gives an interesting perversion on, well, perversion. Is Seligman a truly insightful man when it comes to the human condition, or is he just the most hopelessly awkward fool imaginable?

While Gainsbourg brings a great deal of gravitas to the role, it is her most subdued of the three films she's done with von Trier. And yet it is her most accessible, and she narrates the events of the film with such matter-of-fact certainty, her throaty voice describing the life she's led with all of the care and calm of a woman describing the weather. But in the first half of the saga's four-hour run time, it is Stacy Martin who does the heavy lifting, and she does it with remarkable skill, carefully balancing between naiveté and calculation. As Joe matures and sinks further into her addiction (a term she despises), more and more familiar faces start showing up. Her parents are briefly played by Christian Slater and Connie Nielsen, the former having an excellent "money scene" while the latter has maybe thirty seconds of screen time. Shia LaBeouf, who zigzags between admirable and awkward (sometimes in the course of the same scene), returns as Joe's first employer and ultimately her husband. And mention must be made of Uma Thurman's haughtily fiery scene-stealer of a performance that blazes on-screen as a jilted wife whose husband has abandoned her for what he expected to be a life with Joe. She follows her husband to Joe's apartment with their three tykes in tow, and in the span of seven minutes she frays and has a complete emotional meltdown.

As the first half of the film segues in to the second, Gainsbourg takes the fore, as Joe stops seeking sexual release for joy and instead out of a desperate need to feel something. As the film goes on, she explores different fetishes and outlets, including but not limited to interracial threesomes, bondage, humiliation of all sorts. In one notable case, Gainsbourg's character submits herself to the whims of a young man who specializes in intense BDSM. The fact that this rather devious fellow is played by Jamie Bell is a bit of a shock to anyone who's seen Billy Elliot recently. But if anyone was stimulated by the first act of Joe's saga, the second act dashes it away with cold realism.

As with all of von Trier's films, the ending is unforgettable. I confess that when I sensed the film drawing to a close, I was pleasantly surprised at how von Trier handled it, and that perhaps the Danish prince of melancholia had decided to serve up a happy ending for once. Of course, I forgot this is Lars von Trier we're talking about, and the final minute of the film may send audience members in a tizzy. It's part of the reason why I've taken so long to write my thoughts on it. But as I write this, I do think Nymphomaniac is a terrific entry in his canon, and a worthy closer to his trilogy.