Nymphomaniac: Volume IA wise man once said that without sex, none of us would be here at all. This, of course, perceives sex as a purely procreative activity. But then sex is also a lot of work, and people being people, were it not pleasurable, no one would go to the trouble, and we'd all never have been born. But as those who understand the dangers of "too much of a good thing" know, getting what you want all the time takes all the pleasure from something. It loses its meaning, and becomes the status quo, a compulsion, and even an addiction. It is possible to become addicted to sex, and Joe (Charlotte Gainsbourg) relates the story of her nymphomania to a man named Seligman (Stellan Skarsgård) over a cup of tea one wintry night.
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Nymphomaniac: Volume I is the first half of an in-depth character analysis of Joe, chronicling the events of her life from age two until the time when Seligman brings her in to his apartment, having found her beaten in an alley behind his loft, and how her life has been inexorably tied to sex. When he finds her, she is crumpled and limp, looking as though a fallen angel--and all that implies. Seligman gives her shelter and blankets, and he is kind and ultimately serves as a confessional for her. She attributes her addiction to being a sinful creature, even though she claims she is not religious. Her form of self-persecution is reminiscent of a kind of "Catholic guilt", somehow seeking penance ad infinitum. Compare her persistent guilt with Seligman, who accepts her regardless of her "sins", and speaks in analogies and even parables; in this, Seligman is not unlike Jesus Christ, who accepted Mary Magdalene in spite of her past. As Joe tells her story to Seligman, Nymphomaniac might just go on to be the sordid recollections of an older Joe via the narration of her childhood exploration and her youthful promiscuity. But Seligman is actively involved in her conversation, contributing to the story with his own metaphors and parallels with his interests. Rather than simply bear witness, he engages her and forges a bond quite unlike those she has inflicted upon herself through her sexual indulgence. Once such incident is when a younger Joe (Stacy Martin) and her friend, B (Sophie Kennedy Clark) bet on who can seduce the most men on a train, and Seligman relates their actions to lure men to his own interests in angling fish.
Joe recalls the time she lost her virginity to a boy she liked named Jerôme (Shia LaBeouf), who humiliates her and fixates her on the number "3 + 5", which emerge in her life in patterns, and Seligman observes that they are part of the Fibonacci sequence, which is recalled later when he discusses Bach with Joe. When Joe seeks employment--having given up on medical school--she ends up working under none other than Jerôme, who hires her expecting free sex and another pretty secretary, only to be denied the first. Embittered by the rejection, he is forced to substitute his penchant for humiliating Joe in one way with another, browbeating and demeaning her instead. And in a revelation which speaks to Joe's inner guilt and self-hatred, instead of fighting back, she falls in love with him, his abuse and his beratement. But when he leaves her life, she flings herself into her compulsions with reckless abandon, luring men by the dozens to her apartment. This inevitably leads to her confrontation with the wife of a man who left her to be with Joe, a woman named "Mrs. H" (Uma Thurman), whose breakdown begins with a passive aggressive simmer, but swells into a rolling boil of furious mania at her abandonment by her husband in a scene filled with tension and sorrow.
Seligman represents the true audience for Nymphomaniac: those seeking a complex, psychological study of addiction and depression, as opposed to those who might have been lured into the art house film by professional provocateur and filmmaker, Lars von Trier, under the auspices of seeing unsimulated sex scenes. Lars von Trier does nothing in half-measures, although even in this statement, there is deception in keeping with the controversial artist. Surprisingly sophisticated special effects and prosthetics quite unlike anything else in cinema--with the exception of one of his own preceding works, Antichrist--create the illusion that key members of the cast are engaged in the depicted activities, when in reality it is a combination of computers and body doubles. Nymphomaniac garnered significant attention upon its debut, due largely to its sexual frankness; the original version was cut by roughly an hour and a half, but I suspect that it was less the sex that was cut than the character development in reality, which is at the crux of the film. (I have not seen the theatrical cut, to be fair.) But cinema has always had an awkward relationship with sexuality, and rather than broach the subject at large, suffice to say that censorship has often had it's hand in both restricting and simultaneously drawing attention to content which is proclaimed to be inappropriate for all audiences. This recalls the work of another Scandinavian filmmaker--Ingmar Bergman--whose film The Silence also achieved the same kind of notoriety for its transgressiveness. (Also, that film, like Nymphomaniac, also represented the end of a thematic trilogy--Bergman's being on faith, von Trier's on depression.) Of course, one could argue that all artwork is inappropriate for all audiences; otherwise it would be simply a commercial. And, as Lars von Trier has stated, the film is "digressive" in nature, since the conversation between Joe and Seligman often involve a shift in content to discuss parallel--if different--subject matter and its relation to Joe's sexual addiction.
Nymphomaniac is also a fairly self-referential film for the Danish filmmaker, and nods to his previous films can be observed by astute viewers. Joe is fundamentally the counterpoint to Bess from his own Breaking the Waves. Whereas Bess was a scion for God, and engaged in sex with strangers because she felt she was called to a higher power, Joe does this out of "rebellion" against love, out of a fury, a wanton and destructive side...the devil inside her. Breaking the Waves was also one of the first films Lars von Trier made following the inception of his--and others'--ideological approach to a more natural style of filmmaking, referred to as "Dogme 95". This credo resembles the club Joe and B create, called "The Little Flock", where she and others recall their exploits in taking men, and there are rules which they must adhere to in order to maintain the purity of the order. Their group represents a kind of role reversal, as they are empowered to give testimonies about how they use men--a kind of cross between "The Vagina Monologues" and the "Seduce and Destroy" seminar which Tom Cruise's character in P. T. Anderson's Magnolia espouses. I suppose that it is also ironic that Lars von Trier himself managed to break his own rules of Dogme 95, just as Joe finds herself doing later in life. Furthermore, there is a nod to von Trier's breakthrough film--The Element of Crime--so quick you might miss it, when Joe is checking her answering machine, and one of the voices is named "Fisher", and sounds like the main character of that film.
Aside from the heavy metal of Rammstein and Steppenwolf's "Born to be Wild", Nymphomaniac also boasts two key selections of classical music. The first is "Suite for Jazz Orchestra No. 2" by Shostakovich, which was also featured prominently in Stanley Kubrick's own controversial, erotic drama, Eyes Wide Shut. The second is "Ich ruf zu dir, herr jesu Christ, BWV 639" by Johann Sebastian Bach; this selection is also recognizable from a science fiction film by Andrei Tarkovsky called Solaris, itself a tale about love lost and loneliness, melancholy and compulsion. The latter piece is played for Joe by Seligman on his tape deck, who describes it to her while discussing "polyphony" of voices, which Joe relates to her own story about a trio of lovers who satisfied her in unique ways, whom she calls her "little organ school". Joe recalls how inevitably, her nymphomania resulted in a loss of her pleasure, her compulsion taking over entirely. She spends a good deal of effort in trying to convince Seligman that she is a bad person. She segues into stories by virtue of observations about his apartment, studying it for entry points into her dark history. It's possible she's making it all up--her second reunion with Jerôme is rightly observed by Seligman as implausible--but it's more likely she's desperate to find a connection so she may get the real help she needs, even if she resists in the process. The most poignant episode in Joe's young life is when she recalls her father dying in a hospital. When delirium sets in, she struggles to cope with the terror and suffering which grips the only man she trusted with her love, and falls into bed with strangers--in hospital beds, on gurneys...anything to shunt the pain. And though Joe's loss of pleasure marks but the midway point in her odyssey, she has lured Seligman into her world of agony and ecstasy, and he is on the hook to see it through with her, chapter by chapter.
Recommended for: Fans of a complex and riveting--if explicit--drama about compulsion and addiction, of the confusion which can set in between love and sex when mismanaged. It is most importantly a confession for Joe, seeking absolution--though she is loathe to admit it; a reminder to judge not lest ye be judged.
Joe recalls the time she lost her virginity to a boy she liked named Jerôme (Shia LaBeouf), who humiliates her and fixates her on the number "3 + 5", which emerge in her life in patterns, and Seligman observes that they are part of the Fibonacci sequence, which is recalled later when he discusses Bach with Joe. When Joe seeks employment--having given up on medical school--she ends up working under none other than Jerôme, who hires her expecting free sex and another pretty secretary, only to be denied the first. Embittered by the rejection, he is forced to substitute his penchant for humiliating Joe in one way with another, browbeating and demeaning her instead. And in a revelation which speaks to Joe's inner guilt and self-hatred, instead of fighting back, she falls in love with him, his abuse and his beratement. But when he leaves her life, she flings herself into her compulsions with reckless abandon, luring men by the dozens to her apartment. This inevitably leads to her confrontation with the wife of a man who left her to be with Joe, a woman named "Mrs. H" (Uma Thurman), whose breakdown begins with a passive aggressive simmer, but swells into a rolling boil of furious mania at her abandonment by her husband in a scene filled with tension and sorrow.
Seligman represents the true audience for Nymphomaniac: those seeking a complex, psychological study of addiction and depression, as opposed to those who might have been lured into the art house film by professional provocateur and filmmaker, Lars von Trier, under the auspices of seeing unsimulated sex scenes. Lars von Trier does nothing in half-measures, although even in this statement, there is deception in keeping with the controversial artist. Surprisingly sophisticated special effects and prosthetics quite unlike anything else in cinema--with the exception of one of his own preceding works, Antichrist--create the illusion that key members of the cast are engaged in the depicted activities, when in reality it is a combination of computers and body doubles. Nymphomaniac garnered significant attention upon its debut, due largely to its sexual frankness; the original version was cut by roughly an hour and a half, but I suspect that it was less the sex that was cut than the character development in reality, which is at the crux of the film. (I have not seen the theatrical cut, to be fair.) But cinema has always had an awkward relationship with sexuality, and rather than broach the subject at large, suffice to say that censorship has often had it's hand in both restricting and simultaneously drawing attention to content which is proclaimed to be inappropriate for all audiences. This recalls the work of another Scandinavian filmmaker--Ingmar Bergman--whose film The Silence also achieved the same kind of notoriety for its transgressiveness. (Also, that film, like Nymphomaniac, also represented the end of a thematic trilogy--Bergman's being on faith, von Trier's on depression.) Of course, one could argue that all artwork is inappropriate for all audiences; otherwise it would be simply a commercial. And, as Lars von Trier has stated, the film is "digressive" in nature, since the conversation between Joe and Seligman often involve a shift in content to discuss parallel--if different--subject matter and its relation to Joe's sexual addiction.
Nymphomaniac is also a fairly self-referential film for the Danish filmmaker, and nods to his previous films can be observed by astute viewers. Joe is fundamentally the counterpoint to Bess from his own Breaking the Waves. Whereas Bess was a scion for God, and engaged in sex with strangers because she felt she was called to a higher power, Joe does this out of "rebellion" against love, out of a fury, a wanton and destructive side...the devil inside her. Breaking the Waves was also one of the first films Lars von Trier made following the inception of his--and others'--ideological approach to a more natural style of filmmaking, referred to as "Dogme 95". This credo resembles the club Joe and B create, called "The Little Flock", where she and others recall their exploits in taking men, and there are rules which they must adhere to in order to maintain the purity of the order. Their group represents a kind of role reversal, as they are empowered to give testimonies about how they use men--a kind of cross between "The Vagina Monologues" and the "Seduce and Destroy" seminar which Tom Cruise's character in P. T. Anderson's Magnolia espouses. I suppose that it is also ironic that Lars von Trier himself managed to break his own rules of Dogme 95, just as Joe finds herself doing later in life. Furthermore, there is a nod to von Trier's breakthrough film--The Element of Crime--so quick you might miss it, when Joe is checking her answering machine, and one of the voices is named "Fisher", and sounds like the main character of that film.
Aside from the heavy metal of Rammstein and Steppenwolf's "Born to be Wild", Nymphomaniac also boasts two key selections of classical music. The first is "Suite for Jazz Orchestra No. 2" by Shostakovich, which was also featured prominently in Stanley Kubrick's own controversial, erotic drama, Eyes Wide Shut. The second is "Ich ruf zu dir, herr jesu Christ, BWV 639" by Johann Sebastian Bach; this selection is also recognizable from a science fiction film by Andrei Tarkovsky called Solaris, itself a tale about love lost and loneliness, melancholy and compulsion. The latter piece is played for Joe by Seligman on his tape deck, who describes it to her while discussing "polyphony" of voices, which Joe relates to her own story about a trio of lovers who satisfied her in unique ways, whom she calls her "little organ school". Joe recalls how inevitably, her nymphomania resulted in a loss of her pleasure, her compulsion taking over entirely. She spends a good deal of effort in trying to convince Seligman that she is a bad person. She segues into stories by virtue of observations about his apartment, studying it for entry points into her dark history. It's possible she's making it all up--her second reunion with Jerôme is rightly observed by Seligman as implausible--but it's more likely she's desperate to find a connection so she may get the real help she needs, even if she resists in the process. The most poignant episode in Joe's young life is when she recalls her father dying in a hospital. When delirium sets in, she struggles to cope with the terror and suffering which grips the only man she trusted with her love, and falls into bed with strangers--in hospital beds, on gurneys...anything to shunt the pain. And though Joe's loss of pleasure marks but the midway point in her odyssey, she has lured Seligman into her world of agony and ecstasy, and he is on the hook to see it through with her, chapter by chapter.
Recommended for: Fans of a complex and riveting--if explicit--drama about compulsion and addiction, of the confusion which can set in between love and sex when mismanaged. It is most importantly a confession for Joe, seeking absolution--though she is loathe to admit it; a reminder to judge not lest ye be judged.