nymphomania

Nymphomaniac: Vol. II (2013)

André Crous

Lars von Trier’s sexual two-parter comes to an end with great violence but not nearly enough pleasure.

nymphomaniac-vol-iiDenmark
3*

Director:
Lars von Trier
Screenwriter:
Lars von Trier
Director of Photography:
Manuel Alberto Claro

Running time: 125 minutes

This review complements two other reviews of the film: 
– Nymphomaniac: Vol. I 
– Nymphomaniac: Volumes I and II (director’s cut) 

The last time we saw Joe, she was writhing between the sheets, but in a way different than usual: The erogenous zone between her legs had become nearly insensitive, and she could no longer reach orgasm. Obviously, for the title character of Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac, this is as bad as it gets.

In the first volume, Joe told the story of her rampant sexuality – mostly in bed, but almost everywhere else, too – to the kind stranger Seligman. There was her at a young age stimulating herself by sliding face-down on the wet bathroom floor and then hooking up with strangers on a train in a face-off with her best friend who had equally promiscuous goals. She fell in love with the boy who took her virginity and kept meeting up with him throughout her life, until he eventually became the cantus firmus in the polyphony of her sex life, as so memorably demonstrated by a three-part split-screen accompanied by Bach’s “Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ” chorale prelude for organ.

This second volume, in which the story continues, is much darker in tone than the first two hours, as it focuses on the consequences of Joe’s loss of sensation. The principal consequence is that for some reason she becomes less vigilant about using contraception and ultimately falls pregnant. At first, she takes care of her son, Marcel, but with the constant absence of her husband who travels on business, and her tumescent desire to reach orgasm once more, she embarks on an odyssey of discovery that involves sadomasochism and ducks.

We wouldn’t have put it past him, but fortunately, Von Trier spares us any mention of bestiality. The ducks in questions are not quacking (an insert that provides the biggest laugh in the film) but silent. For those not in the know, hiding the “silent duck” is the sexual act of fisting.

It is a young man called K. who hides the silent duck and is an expert at a number of additional techniques to inflict terrible pain on Joe that leave her body bruised and battered, and in one case, her buttocks bleeding as the flesh is torn out of them in a way that Von Trier explicitly links with the Passion of Christ.

These scenes, violent as they are, are nothing compared with the darkest part of the film, which takes place on a parallel track and cleverly uses Von Trier’s otherwise insufferable 2009 film, Antichrist. It involves Joe’s gradual isolation and rejection of family life and leads to two stomach-churning scenes with the infant Marcel. For those who saw the opening sequence of Antichrist, a comparison with the events in this film, and the relationship between Joe and Jerôme in particular, will be very insightful.

Those who have seen Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom are also in for a last-minute surprise, although Von Trier’s reference isn’t as solid as the one to his own film.

While it certainly wasn’t Von Trier’s intention with Nymphomaniac: Vol. II to make an “enjoyable” film in the conventional sense, it isn’t as riveting as its predecessor either, and it is an easy stretch of the metaphor to say the pleasure of Nymphomaniac arrived all too prematurely. The many different tangents on which the director went off in the first film were almost always surprising and often both ridiculous and thoughtful at the same time.

Here, however, Seligman loses the plot as he finds ever more obscure historical or literary counterparts to the situations and the characters in Joe’s autobiography, at one point leading her to exclaim it one of his “weakest digressions” yet. We learn a little bit more about him, but like the single scene of Joe’s work environment, the glimpse is far from satisfactory. And yet, as Von Trier did earlier in the story with his antics about the Fibonacci numbers, our patience does pay off, as the events unfolding behind a black screen toward the end of the film can be illuminated by earlier revelations of Seligman’s character.

Nymphomaniac has presented film critics in particular with the opportunity to dissect its pornographic intentions. It was a topic I briefly dealt with (and mostly rejected) in my review of the first instalment of the two-part film. Vol. II hands us a different club to beat the director with, and this one is not only more appropriate but more brutal. It is the violence performed against women.

Sadomasochism generally, and even in the particular case of this film where there is a mutually agreed-upon – but for the viewer utterly distressing – absence of “safe words”, means there is consent for things to happen that would otherwise give rise to lawsuits of battery and assault. Von Trier films the instances of S&M violence committed against Joe in a way that never sensationalises the event but maximises our discomfort and even disgust.

In so doing, he cannot be labelled any kind of deviant or misogynist but rather a filmmaker who knows how to get us to squirm without recklessly stumbling across the very apparent ethical minefield. He manages the same feat later on when Joe faces a man whose urges would be criminal, not to mention incontestably monstrous, if acted upon, but both Joe and Von Trier neatly draw the line between victim and aggressor, in the process surprising us by revealing, in this and the previous situation, human beings behind what at first seemed to be thugs.

Nymphomaniac, Vol. II is quite different from the first film in terms of tone and doesn’t keep our attention as easily. Seligman speaks too much, the chapter headings become a bit contrived, and the story-within-a-story simply becomes tiring. As the lead, Charlotte Gainsbourg seems chronically depressed, both in the present and in her flashbacks (she takes over here from Stacy Martin, who played Young Joe in Vol. I), and her demeanour infects our experience.

Von Trier continues to frustrate his audience with odd choices of characters and sudden narrative twists, but there is no denying his Nymphomaniac is unlike anything he or anyone else has done since the days of Dogville and Manderlay, and these are all the films of a master filmmaker.

Nymphomaniac: Vol. I (2013)

André Crous

The first instalment of Lars Von Trier’s sweeping sex film keeps surprising us, and not just in the ways you might expect.

nymphomaniac-vol-iDenmark
3.5*

Director:
Lars von Trier
Screenwriter:
Lars von Trier
Director of Photography:
Manuel Alberto Claro

Running time: 120 minutes

This review complements two other reviews of the film: 
– Nymphomaniac: Vol. II 
– Nymphomaniac: Volumes I and II (director’s cut) 

Vastly overhyped because of its supposedly controversial sex scenes starring famous actors and actresses, Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac: Vol. I delivers a story whose shock value is actually rather toned-down compared with the director’s previous work. It is, however, the best film he has made since Manderlay in 2005.

For theatrical distribution, Von Trier’s opus was cut from a rough cut of 330 minutes to around 240 minutes, neatly spread out over two films.

As with some of his previous filmic outings, most notably Dogville and Manderlay, Nymphomaniac: Vol. I is structured like a novel, with five onscreen chapter heads clearly dividing the film into separate sections. The impetus for this may be the book on angling that sets the story in motion, or it may be a more orderly way of working through the clutter of one woman’s seemingly never-ending sequence of sexual encounters.

The middle-aged woman, played by Charlotte Gainsbourg, called Joe, is found bruised and battered in an alleyway one night by the caring stranger Seligman (Stellan Skarsgård), who takes her home when she asks for tea and milk instead of an ambulance. He puts her to bed and asks her what happened.

She pointedly answers that she is a bad person, but with a little persuasion, she starts recounting her life story, from her childhood through her teens and into young adulthood (in the flashbacks, her role is played by Stacy Martin). In the process, there is talk of masturbation, sexual incantations and hypersexuality, but also of fly-fishing, Fibonacci numbers and Bach.

The film oscillates wildly between the profound and the preposterous, sometimes in the span of a single sentence, as a serious conversation about one’s hesitation to enter a door that has just opened leads to a close-up of a cat suddenly disinterested by the door that has opened in front of it. It is interesting to note, however, the closed-up hole in Seligman’s front door where a cat could have entered in the past.

Nymphomaniac: Vol. I is interested in both showing and telling, as we get seemingly superfluous depictions of concepts – from onscreen math during a sex scene to an illustration of the angle necessary to parallel park successfully while this action is being carried out correctly, seen from God’s point of view – as well as a very extensive discussion of the interconnectedness of sex and more mundane everyday activities.

It often seems like Joe and Seligman are talking past each other, before the connection slowly reveals itself. But we have a nagging feeling that something is not quite right. Kind as Seligman is, he does too many things that remind Joe of past incidents, and his interests in the Fibonacci numbers and in fly-fishing all too quickly help explain Joe’s actions to herself.

Is Seligman real? There is some discussion about delirium tremens, the potentially fatal condition of abstaining from alcohol if one has been addicted to it, which leads to horrifying hallucinations. Could Joe’s abstinence from sex have led to a similar form of delirium tremens in which she discusses her life with a complete stranger who seems so connected to her?

It is not entirely improbable, but we will have to wait for Vol. II to get a clear answer.

In the meantime, let us entertain ourselves with the question whether this is pornography, as some in the media are bound to suggest.

The answer, not resoundingly, but firmly enough, is “no”. Some may find the sex scenes somewhat stimulating, but whatever graphic imagery the film contains is brief and limited in nature. And even when there is nudity, it is usually more scientific than sexy. Compare this with Blue is the Warmest Colour (La Vie d’Adèle: Chapitres 1&2), in which lingering takes gave us blow-by-blow accounts of sex scenes between its leading ladies, or with Von Trier’s own, much more explicit The Idiots (Idioterne) from 1998.

While determined not to fall in love, which would mean sex more than once with the same person (an appalling notion to her mind), Joe does eventually have sex, at least twice, with a young man called Jerôme. It must be said here that the man playing the part, Shia LaBeouf, is a charming actor, but his British accent is atrocious and does great damage to our willingness to take him seriously.

What Joe’s uncharacteristic amorousness spells for her future, we will probably learn in Part II, but by the time the film’s end credits roll, and we are treated to snippets from the sequel (which mostly assure us that there will be countless more scenes of her masturbating), we are deliberately left confused as to the meaning and the relevance of all of these stories. Also, Joe says she has a full-time job, but we never see her doing any job except the obvious one.

We do see – and hear – a lot of talking, and although some viewers may nod off during some of the very inexpressive Gainsbourg–Skarsgård interactions, they will be rewarded in good time with some clever application of different fields of interest to the woman’s sex life. These dialogues often seem too overtly written and staged, and Von Trier certainly could have been more succinct, but at least we quickly realise time is not wasted (except for a rather tedious black-and-white chapter with Joe’s dying father).

Lars von Trier, as magnificent as he has proved himself to be in the past, has recently had his head stuck in the clouds in a very public way. His tawdry Antichrist, most famous for its close-up of Gainsbourg cutting off her clitoris with a pair of scissors, concluded with perhaps the most ludicrous and inappropriate dedication in the history of film: to the late Russian filmmaker and master of the sublime, Andrei Tarkovsky. So, too, in Nymphomaniac, Vol. I, he continuously tries to establish a link between his own film and the other big “sex film” of the recent past that was equally vastly overhyped because of its supposedly controversial sex scenes starring a famous actor and actress: Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut.

The director links the two films by making repeated use of the most famous sound bite from Kubrick’s film, the gorgeous “Waltz No. 2” from Shostakovich’s “Suite for Variety Orchestra”. But whereas the music boosted the lush, colourful dinner parties of the former, the music in Von Trier’s mostly desaturated picture only serves to draw on our knowledge of Eyes Wide Shut without digging any deeper.

Despite its awkward transitions and an incomplete storyline, Nymphomaniac: Vol. I is easy to watch, and time passes remarkably quickly. Uma Thurman, who only stars in a single scene, is unforgettable in her role as a cuckquean, and the chemistry between LaBeouf and Martin is awkward, riveting, and sometimes a little humorous – qualities that make their scenes all the more enjoyable.

This is a promising first part of a two-part story, but a unified film would have been much better. However, although that black-and-white chapter seems entirely out of place, the pieces fit together surprisingly well, even if the hype promised more than the film could ever have delivered.

Shame (2011)

André Crous

Steve McQueen’s second film is all about one man’s sexual desire and what he does to get what he craves.

shame-mcqueenUK/USA
3*

Director:
Steve McQueen
Screenwriters:
Steve McQueen
Abi Morgan
Director of Photography:
Sean Bobbitt

Running time: 100 minutes

He looks them up and down, everywhere he goes: women, men, couples – they all find him seductive. He goes after them, and he gets what he wants, every time.

Shame is the story of Brandon Sullivan, a young executive who is the poster boy for unapologetic hedonism until he is confronted with the more serious demands of intimacy from two women in his life: his sister and a co-worker looking for more than a fling.

In one of the first scenes of the film, Sullivan watches a young woman sitting opposite him on the New York subway. She returns his gaze, clearly enjoying the attention, though trying to hide her excitement in this public space. At the next stop, she gets up and grabs onto the pole next to him: She is wearing a wedding ring. But he doesn’t relent and instead pursues her down the tunnels of the underground.

Brandon is physically in very good shape, clean-cut and well-coiffed and has a good job downtown and an apartment near Gramercy Park in Manhattan, but the ever-present windows and glass dividers separate him from the rest of civilization. He is used to being in charge of his life, and especially his sex life: He prefers to pay for sex in his own apartment or seek it out in public spaces, where people can be easily discarded but never permits a greater measure of intimacy. When he is not out in bars looking for fun, he sits in his spotless apartment and masturbates in front of his computer screen. He is young and enjoys one-night stands and the general remoteness of his sex partners, sometimes a world away in front of a webcam.

He is forward without being aggressive and plays off his good looks and charm; he knows how to speak to a woman, and almost always he benefits from a comparison with his womanising boss, David. David compliments himself as a way to pick up girls, while Brandon compliments the girls themselves and is much more successful than his pal, even when David is the one doling out one pickup line after another.

Brandon’s bachelor lifestyle is upended, however, when his drama-queen sister, Sissy, arrives to stay with him for a few nights. Not only does she invade his privacy and walk in on him while he’s polishing his family jewels in the bathroom, but she represents a genuine attack on his licentious way of living. The very first evening at his place, she spends hours crying on the phone while she speaks to her boyfriend, telling him how much she loves him. It goes without saying this is the kind of debasement of which Brandon would never allow himself to be a victim.

The relationship between Brandon and his needy sister is evidently a toxic one, and there are hints of a traumatic childhood that are never elaborated on. The tension between them is made all the more agonising by the use of very long takes, one of director Steve McQueen’s trademarks. We know this situation won’t end well, but until the end we have no idea where all of this is headed.

One reason for our disorientation is the structure of the film. At various intervals, McQueen expertly weaves together two, sometimes three different storylines and timeframes to create a mystery guided by our impressions. These obscurities are sometimes quickly resolved and add another level of slight discomfort to the proceedings on-screen.

Shame is McQueen’s second feature film, and while it is in many respects more conventional than his début masterpiece, Hunger, in which Michael Fassbender (who plays the lead in Shame) starred as the Irish republican Bobby Sands, the director doesn’t nail the material the way one would have expected. Technically, the film is beyond reproach, but unlike Hunger, which is set almost entirely inside the Maze prison outside Belfast, the technical aspects of Shame do not engender an experience capable of encompassing an equally flaccid narrative, this time set all over New York City.

There are moments of cinematic grandeur, but the film is also the victim of the director’s fear of explaining too much, and, in the end, too much is left unsaid and unshown. That is a real shame.