![]() ![]() 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. 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. 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. ![]() 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). 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. 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 demands Seligman not call for assistance, instead accompanying the man back to his apartment for a cup of tea. ![]() 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). Far from it the sex is clinical, detached, almost boring at times. But this film is not designed to arouse, to titillate. 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. And Nymphomaniac, his third outing with his muse Charlotte Gainsbourg, is perhaps his most expansive work to date. While he does have his peculiarities, he is first and foremost an artist. Most people underestimate Lars von Trier. 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. Nymphomaniac would deal with the bare-it-all, spare-no-details chronicle of a woman's sexual awakening, adventuring, and ultimate degradation. 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. ![]()
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