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5 things I learned while watching Nymphomaniac
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By now many of you may have gotten wind of the latest “event” movie from Danish enfant terrible Lars von Trier, he of the malevolent mind bender Antichrist, the Bjork-starring anti-musical Dancer in the Dark and the lush Melancholia.
When von Trier releases a film, the cinema world races around him in circles, debating furiously, cheering and jeering in equal measure. He knows this and clearly loves to push boundaries and buttons.
With his latest opus, the pornographic masterwork Nymphomaniac, the filmmaker doesn’t just push boundaries, he decimates them. The movie stars von Trier’s muse, actress and pop star Charlotte Gainsbourg as Joe, a self-described sex addict whose lifelong free-fall into carnality has both liberated her and led her to lubricated ruin.
After dropping jaws all over Europe, the five-hour Nymphomaniac opens in select Canadian markets next Friday, ready to shake our sensibilities with is cavalcade of extreme and explicit couplings. This writer was invited to the Toronto press screening last week, along with most of Hogtown’s finest critics. It was an elephantine affair, beginning at 9 a.m. and climaxing at 2 p.m. and was indeed an “event”, complete with intermission to provide a breather from the non-stop emissions. The movie is, of course, more than just a star-studded sex film and is in fact, very edifying,
Here then, related in as family-friendly a fashion as possible, are five things I learned while stuffed into a sweaty cinema watching Nymphomaniac…
The version we’re getting in Canada is cut
Before the screening, the publicist announced that Canada will indeed be getting the slightly truncated edit of Nymphomaniac, to which some critics sneered.
“Don’t worry,” the smirking PR assured, “you’ll still get plenty of ‘stuff’ to look at.”
Sex is like fly-fishing
The framework of Nymphomaniac consists of a battered Joe relating her salacious life story to a kindly bachelor (played by von Trier regular Stellan Skarsgård) who convincingly draws every one of her penetrating anecdotes back to the art of fly-fishing, complete with beautifully shot footage of the hobby sport.
Shia LaBeouf has nothing to hide
He may be marauding around Hollywood with a bag on his head, but troubled Nymphomaniac co-star LaBeouf leaves no other part of his anatomy to the imagination here, dressed as he is in nothing more than a smile for half the film’s running time.
Mini-muffins taste great post coitus
During the intermission between Nymphomaniac Part One and Part Two, the publicist treated us wobbly-kneed critics to a spread of mini-muffins, juice and coffee. It was odd discussing LaBeouf’s beef and Gainsbourg’s fluid performance while huffing down bran, but it was all part of the experience.
The silent duck
Unfortunately, I cannot elaborate on this plot-point, the revelation of which stretches more than the imagination. To learn more, you’ll just have to see the film.
And I heartily suggest you do see the film. Because the beauty of Nymphomaniac and all of von Trier’s work is that hidden inside its outrageous exterior is something profound, poetic and deeply human.
Metro
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