Movie review by Greg Carlson
“Nymphomaniac” constitutes the third and final installment in Lars von Trier’s “Depression Trilogy,” presumably inspired by the filmmaker’s own long-term struggles with dejection and despair. The release of the movie, in keeping with von Trier’s always calculated relationship with both gatekeepers and the public, has included festival screenings of the uncut epic as well as a staggered U.S. premiere in two truncated parts available on demand and in limited theatrical engagements. Like several of the director’s previous films, “Nymphomaniac” employs a structure reliant on episodic chapters, and “Vol. I” covers the first five of a total eight stories related by Joe (Charlotte Gainsbourg) to Seligman (Stellan Skarsgard) on the topic of her lifelong sexual odyssey.
Von Trier, whose formal rigor and arch sense of humor have rendered him mostly immune to dismissive pop critics, constructs a hysterical, onyx black comedy throughout much of “Vol. I.” Writers have already descended on the bruising, blunt ridiculousness of the fly fishing metaphor proposed by Seligman near the start of Joe’s confessions. Von Trier goes on to explore his appetite for visually arresting experimentation, displaying on screen numbers aligned with the Fibonacci sequence and golden spiral, graphic diagrams, photographs of flaccid members of varying shapes and sizes, stock footage, split screens, triptychs, and an homage to Muybridge’s motion studies. Musical juxtaposition, ranging from Rammstein’s “Fuhre mich” to Bach’s “Ich ruf zu dir, herr Jesu Christ” from “The Little Organ Book” provides perfect counterpoint to both Joe’s self-described rake’s progress and the sustained discussion of polyphony she shares with Seligman.
The vignette approach, accomplished via a series of flashbacks in which the younger Joe is played by Stacy Martin, invites comparisons among the quintet of reminiscences and some are stronger than others. The third chapter, titled “Mrs. H.,” a thermonuclear confrontation showcasing a blistering and brilliant Uma Thurman as the wronged wife of one of Joe’s lovers, lays bare the toll of adultery. Simultaneously nerve-wracking and wildly, uncomfortably funny, the stormy meltdown is the film’s most successful and fully realized sequence. Elements of other chapters carom from the haunting to the risible, fueled regularly by Seligman’s idiotic exclamations. On the subject of Joe’s hunt for potential conquests on a train during a sex contest, Seligman, straight-faced, excitedly spouts: “You were reading the river!”
Near the end of the credit crawl that closes the film, a caveat claims that “None of the professional actors had penetrative sexual intercourse and all such scenes were performed by body doubles.” The statement, it turns out, may be more provocative than the inclusion of hardcore acts in a “serious” art film, but it does raise the issue of boundaries and limits for “professional actors” applying their craft. Once the checks are signed and the cameras roll, are not the body doubles also professional actors? Conversations with some overlapping and corresponding themes accompanied movies as far ranging as “Last Tango in Paris,” “Don’t Look Now,” “Caligula,” “Baise-moi,” “The Brown Bunny,” “9 Songs,” and multiple films by Catherine Breillat. Simulacra or not, the eternally impish, Cannes persona non grata von Trier knows full well the value of attracting attention.
Setting aside the promise of debauched spectacle, I have always admired the way the filmmaker embeds his largest existential queries in the most simple, direct figurations. Like Brothers Grimm fairy tales and Mother Goose nursery rhymes, von Trier cooks up his diabolical schemes with elemental elegance. Given the man’s previous depictions of sexuality on film, it should come as no surprise that the design and execution of the digitally composited carnality in “Nymphomaniac” is detached, clinical, and psychologically fraught.
Arguments attesting to or denying eroticism are moot, however, as titillation is in the eye and heartbeat of the beholder. Gender scholars will continue the now decades long examination of von Trier’s relationship to his female protagonists. One of the durable arguments on this topic questions the extent to which von Trier’s tormented women are stand-ins for the director himself. At the conclusion of “Vol. I,” Joe, panicked and distraught, cries that she can’t feel anything, but von Trier’s filmmaking certainly suggests otherwise for the inspired auteur.