There are plenty of filmmakers whose work occupies the love-it-or-loathe-it category, but Lars von Trier is a rarity, in that his work can be loved and loathed simultaneously. You may find yourself relishing his inventiveness and audacity while recoiling from the narcissistic, sometimes bratty knowingness of his will to provoke.
Many regard von Trier as simply a controversialist, out to get a rise from critics and audience alike. Nymphomaniac pushes this self-absorbtion to new extremes, and certainly confirms that the director is engaged in a testy dialogue with his detractors; at points, the film resembles those records that rappers devote to venting their spleen at haters of their last release.
Nymphomaniac is not an easy object to define. Still other versions will be released internationally, length depending on varying levels of acceptability in different territories. Last month, the Berlin Film Festival premiered the uncut Volume I , running at minutes, as opposed to the theatrically released , but the differences were less substantial than expected.
There were certainly more male and female genital shots, including close-ups of cunnilingus and surgical insertions during an abortion, while an erect penis that appeared fairly clearly to belong to Shia LaBeouf hoved into view at a number of points. The film begins with a battered, bruised Joe found in an alley by Seligman, a solitary, erudite bachelor. In fact, the closest Nymphomaniac comes to resembling any actual films about sex is in its parallels with those of Catherine Breillat, who often depicts it as both a potentially transformative ordeal and a passion in the agonistic sense to be endured.
There are brief inserts, pasted into the film as if into a scrapbookโfragments of dream imagery, a shot rotated on its side to illustrate that an eye and a vagina are oddly alike depending on your viewpoint, assorted art- and film-historical nods to Balthus, Muybridge, et al.
