By William Wolf

NYMPHOMANIAC: VOLUME I AND VOLUME II  Send This Review to a Friend

One thing to say outright is that “Nymphomaniac Volume I” and “Nymphomaniac Volume II,” companion films by director Lars von Trier, are not pornography, artistic or otherwise, a label that some may be inclined to apply. Pornography is meant to sexually arouse. Although there is plenty of candid sex depicted, abundant nudity and graphic sex descriptions, these films appear to genuinely attempt to describe a sad case of an illness every bit as debilitating as addiction to alcohol or drugs. To view the story of Joe, played bravely by Charlotte Gainsbourg, as an effort to arouse the viewer would be to miss the point. Apart from flashes of gallows humor extracted from some situations, the fictional case study, while often fascinating, as case studies can be, is ultimately depressing to watch.

Although both films are being released individually with a time lapse between, they are best discussed together, and the second one is already available via video on demand.

The saga begins in Volume I when the adult Joe is found badly beaten in an alley by a kindly, lonely professor, Seligman, played by the fine actor Stellan Skarsgård. He takes her home, and little by little she begins telling the story of her nymphomania to him. He listens attentively, provides observations along the way, and gives the impression of wanting to persuade her not to think so harshly of herself. The stories of her life experiences pour from her as she lies in bed, her face cruelly bruised. She is hardly a vision of attractiveness.

The sex of the younger Joe is enacted by Stacy Martin in flashbacks that trace the beginnings of her sexual awareness, which escalate into the steady hunger for sex with different men, none of whom leaves her satiated. Joe calculatingly asks Shia LaBeouf as Jerôme to relieve her of her virginity, which he does perfunctorily. The film moves on recount her descent into the steadily increasing compulsions.

There is one outrageously funny, although inherently sad, scene in which Uma Thurman as a vengeful wife, her children in tow, invades the apartment where her husband is shacked up with Joe. As she invites the children to see “the whore’s bed” Thurman is in full rage, an example of every women who has ever sought to wreak havoc on an errant husband and sever ties with his children. It is a magnificently acted outburst--and very funny from a viewer’s standpoint if not for the character. For me it was the Volume I highlight.

Volume II gets much darker. Joe cannot be responsible enough to care for the son she has with Jerôme, and takes to going out on her escapades, leaving the baby alone. And in one harrowing scene we watch the child escape from its crib and wander to a perilous spot on the balcony. The father comes home in time to prevent any disaster, but the episode results in her being given an ultimatum. If she walks out, it is for good. She leaves and her descent continues.

The film contains a humorous scene in which Joe sends word to a man of color that she would like to have sex with him. He turns up with a black brother as well, and Von Trier displays the enormous erect equipment of each, as they argue about which way to have Joe.

Guilt feeds Joe’s need for punishment, and she begins going to a professional sadist (Jamie Bell). (These experiences are being recounted in flashback to her rescuer as in Volume I.) We watch her being lashed viciously until her backside is raw meat. The advent of such cruelty is coupled with a job she gets as a debt-collector enforcer, in which she terrorizes her targets. A sexual relationship develops with a pretty young woman (Mia Goth), who becomes Joe’s assistant in the collection enterprise, a job the newcomer assumes with dangerous passion.

In the course of the second film, Joe takes a stab at group therapy for sex addicts, but she totally rejects the experience during one session in which she strikes out at everybody in the group and stalks away.

In Volume II we also learn more about the professor, to whom Joe has been telling of her life. It turns out he has never had sex, being a virgin for whom sex was not on the agenda. One begins to wonder what he is doing intellectually and emotionally will all of this information and description heaped upon him.

As the film approaches its climax, we find out what happened to Joe that left her beaten up and in an alley. It is not a pretty picture. The ending itself is diabolically cynical, which left me with an ugly feeling, as if anything decent in “Nymphomaniac” had been slashed away ruthlessly by Von Trier. I can’t argue that what he shows could not have happened, but the course taken attacks the idea that there can be decent human responses to victims in need, and that everything winds up suspect and soiled. Magnolia Pictures releases. Reviewed March 23, 2014.

  

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