NYMPHOMANIAC, VOLUME 1
Denmark, 2014, 150 minutes, Colour.
Charlotte Gainsbourg, Stellan Skaarsgard, Shia La Bouef, Stacey Martin, Christian Slater, Connie Nielsen, Uma Thurman, Saskia Reeves.
Directed by Lars von Trier.
An enormous amount of word-of-mouth about this film. A lot of it veering towards the scandalous as well as the sexually prurient. After all, just look at the title. And then there is the factor of the writer-director, the extraordinarily eccentric but creative Danish director, Lars von Trier. Over the decades he has made a wide range of films, at one stage focusing on his Dogme principles of filming with cinematic purity and not relying on effects, lighting… This phase seems to have passed, although the different film styles that von Trier uses indicate his history of experimentation.
This is the first volume of the two-part Nymphomaniac. This first part was screened at the 2014 Berlinale. The second volume was promised for an occasion like the Cannes Film Festival. However, the two parts were screening together in special events soon after the screening in Berlin. In the months prior, an abridged version of the two parts was screened commercially.
One of the most controversial of von Trier’s films was the Antichrist, 2009. Many considered it too confronting with his treatment of the death of a child, the tensions between husband and wife and some sadistic and gruesome behaviour. However, the film could be seen as a psychological, psychosexual study and judged accordingly.
Nymphomaniac is definitely a psychological study, a study of sexual condition that has dire consequences for the nymphomaniac herself as well as the people with whom she comes in contact. This is very clear from the first volume.
The film opens with a dark screen, some noises of water falling, gradually shows us a dark street in a Scandinavian town and a man going to the local store who then discovers a woman lying on the street. He offers an ambulance but she refuses and he takes her to his home, allows her to shower and gives her a cup of tea. He, like the audience, wants to ask questions and she agrees.
What follows is an over two hour interchange between the man and the woman, flashbacks as she tells her story, starting from her infancy and sexual awareness, playing with a companion, her love for her doctor father and aware of the seeming indifference of her mother. Then with a close friend, she begins her nymphomaniac behaviour, the two of them trying to seduce as many men as they come across, having a bet about how many they can seduce during a train journey.
One of the key things is that one of the girls realises that love can be involved, whereas the nymphomaniac herself has no experience of love, no real emotions at all, a cerebral understanding of her condition and the compulsion to act out. This is visualised as she goes to work, is fired from her job, takes up with a married man and clashes with his wife, meet up again with the young man who, indifferently, took her virginity and is now an executive.
A brief synopsis does not do justice to how all this is presented on screen. A great deal of it is presented as realism. However, as von Trier has done in other films, he introduces diagrams and formulas represented on screen, details for parking a car which detach the audience in some ways from what is going on, or makes them think about the meaning.
In the abridged version there are some graphic sequences, but in the full versions, some explicit sexual activity is presented, sometimes in brief close-up. Information during the final credits indicate that the professional actors did not participate in these sequences but body doubles were used.
Charlotte Gainsbourg, who appeared in Antichrist and Melancholia, is Joe, the young woman who is telling her story. Stacey Martin appears as the younger Joel in the flashbacks. Stellan Skarsgaard is the man listening to the story.
Shia la Boeuf is the young businessman. But two key performances are impressive: Christian Slater as the doctor-father of Joe, especially in the sequence where he is dying in hospital; and the other is the wife of the executive who leaves her for Joe. She is played expertly by Uma Thurman who gives a performance of ‘hell hath no fury…’, bringing her two children to confront her husband and Joe, acting in an extraordinarily demented and moody fashion, a show-stopping performance, to be welcomed amongst all the sexual behaviour.
This review is only of Nymphomaniac Volume 1, some of the advertised cast have not yet appeared and the plot will lead us up to the point where Joe is confiding in the listener, exercising a kind of therapy for herself and for the audience.
1. The word-of-mouth about the film? About von Trier? The title, sexuality issues, treatment, the visuals? Voyeurism? Prurient curiosity?
2. The director and his career, his interests? Sexuality and addiction? Therapy? Philosophical background about human nature? Psychological theories? Images and symbols? Discussions? The animal kingdom and the human kingdom? The fly-fishing theory? Music and harmonies?
3. The initial blank screen with sound effects? The slow start, the silence, the water falling, the walls, night, the body on the ground, the atmosphere?
4. The choice of telling the story in chapters?
5. Seligman going shopping, walking past, seeing the body, wanting to call the ambulance, Joe and her refusal? Going to his home, the shower, making her comfortable, offering her tea?
6. Charlotte Gainsbourg and her screen presence? Age, look, battered, her response to Seligman, bed, tea? Allowing him to ask questions?
7. The discussion between the two, a form of therapy, counselling, psychological listening, rationing? The long session? The insertion of the flashbacks? The range of images? The explicit sexual experiences? Stellan Skarsgaard as Seligman?
8. The device of visuals, numbers, grids, formulas the ironic effect, humorous, distancing from the therapy, yet informative?
9. The importance of language and theory? Joe and her ignorance, having to learn words? Seligman and his making parallels with addiction and addictive behaviour? The fly on the wall? His love of fly-fishing? The visuals of the fishing, the rivers? The fish, the hook, the bait, the nature of the pursuit, the patterns? The numbers and the formulae? The musical notes? The split-screen? The car, the leopard, the unity and music?
10. Joe’s story and its credibility? Her selection of events and memories? At two, touching herself, the discussion about ultra-scans and the foetus touching itself? The two young girls, touch, paddling in the water? Drying up the water? Joe and her father, the bond, his being a doctor? The distance from her mother, playing solitaire? Her friend and the sexualised friendship? Her wanting to lose her virginity, the visit to Jerome, asking him, his seeming indifference, the encounters, 3+5? His leaving? The effect on her?
11. The two friends, the role of leadership, their escapades and promiscuous behaviour? Their carelessness? On the train, the goal of the chocolates? Her friend being bold, keeping score, the men and their responses in the carriage? the seduction, going to the toilet? Joe being slow? Asking questions which began with the letters WH…? The effect? Eye contact? Joe going into the carriage, discussions about the toilet, the man accompanying her? The sexual encounter? Then moving to first class? The traveller, the conductor and his criticisms, the traveller buying the tickets, the guard calling them ironically, ladies? The friend failing? Betting all the chocolates on Joe’s return? Talk, the man talking about his wife, of their wanting children, her phone call, the best time for ovulation? His attempts at resisting Joe, allowing the fellatio, Joe and her consciousness of spoiling the possibility of his wife’s conception?
12. Joe and Seligman and the discussion of the moral issues, Joe seeing herself as bad, evil, with the man on the train, spoiling his life? The irony of her friend, seemingly cavalier, whispering that the secret of sex was love? Joe rejecting this? Going on her own?
13. Seligman, his Jewish name, his story? Jewish moral tradition? His pity, Joe and her reaction?
14. Joe, wanting a job, no qualifications, seeing Jerome, the reaction, his reaction? She being aloof, his resistance, the secretary? The drive, her skill in parking (and the diagram for the parking)? Her writing the letter, the secretary suggesting she wait to deliver it? Jerome and his marrying the secretary, gone? His uncle, explaining the situation, firing Joe?
15. The collage of episodes with men, explicit, telling them that they were her first, the responses of satisfaction?
16. The liaison with the married man, separated from his wife, going to the apartment? Mrs H, bringing the boys, Uma Thurman’s performance? Her scorn for her husband, the melodramatics, theatrical? Despising her ex-husband yet seeming to love him? Her ironic remarks about Joe? Interrogating her, Joe listening? Mrs H and her playing the emotions of the boys, of her ex-husband, a tour-do-force performance and experience? Desperate and the dramatic exit?
17. Joe’s father, the bonds between them, his explanation of the leaves? His illness, referring to Edgar Allan Poe? Seligman and his explanation of Delirium, the DTs? The mind and pain, the drugs of relief? The father in hospital, ill, the morphine, the leaves, the talk, Joe keeping vigil? The nurse and her care and help? Waiting, the father resting? Joe going off and having sex with the hospital workers? Her father suffering, trying to help, his delirium, the straitjacket, his death, tying his jaw? The effect on Joe? Her mother’s arrival, brief visit? Seeming not to care?
18. The chapter on music, different aspects of sexuality and performance? The fat man, his car, washing Joe, cunnilingus, close-up? The man who
appeared as a leopard, his behaviour? Jerome coming back, the sex with Joe, her seeing it as perfect harmony? (the triple split screen?).
19. The end of the first part? The significance of a portrait of a nymphomaniac? Sex scenes and graphic behaviour? (And the declaration of the end that only body doubles were used for hard-core sequences?) Issues of prurience and curiosity, of voyeurism? The proportion of these scenes in terms of the whole film and the therapy sequences?
20. The remaining issue of love, Joe saying that in all her sexual experiences she had no feelings, especially of love?
