Nymphomaniac is more than sex: a review of Nymphomaniac

Nymphomaniac is more than sex: a review of Nymphomaniac

A middle-aged bachelor (Stellan Skarsgård) finds a woman (Charlotte Gainsbourg) in an alley covered with bruises. He takes her home and nurses her wounds. In return, she tells him her life story: her name is Joe and she is a nymphomaniac. Even as a child, Joe was aware that she was different and that she possessed an inordinate craving for sex uncomplicated by love and jealousy. She gets a job at a printing company and there, meets Jerome (Shia LaBeouf), who also happens to be her boss. One day without warning, Jerome disappears but not before raising her awareness to the fact that sex is good, but love is the missing ingredient. Her journey to find this missing ingredient will put her in some strange situations and also lays the foundation for this film.

Nymphomaniac is a 2 part European art film by director Lars Von Trier chronicling the odyssey of a woman who seeks connections to the outside world through sexual experimentation! This 2013 film contains sexually explicit situations that leaves nothing to the imagination. The film’s all-star cast includes Charlotte Gainsbourg, Stellan Skarsgard (Insomnia), Willem Dafoe, Christian Slater, Uma Thurman, Shia LaBeouf as Jerome, and Stacy Martin as the teenaged Joe. This film challenges the social conventions of sexuality through a woman who pursues her desires openly while eschewing any emotional intimacy with or responsibility for those affected, including men to whom she declares false feelings for nor the families that these men abandon to be with her. 

The film works psychologically, sociologically and as a metaphor of society’s desensitization to stimulation and its detachment from the emotional needs of others, a theme similar to Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 1975 film called Salo, based on Marquis De Sade’s 120 Days of Sodom. Instead of pleasure, that film describes civilization rotting to a point where it is incapable of distinguishing pleasure from shit. 

The use of CGI in this film is stunning. The sex scenes are real but performed by porn stars and not the films' main actors whose heads are digitally attached to the bodies of the actual performers. 

Charlotte Gainsbourg is incredible in Nymphomaniac as she is in Von Trier’s 2009 film, AntiChrist, which also stars Willem Dafoe. Since leaving the Transformers franchise behind, Shia LaBeouf has become a seriously good actor (He is stellar in this film). Also of note is Uma Thurman as the wife of 1 of Joe's many lovers. In a way, Uma's devastating performance in this film dominates the other performances.  As I said, this is part 1 of a 2 part film and if you like Lars Von Trier's AntiChrist and you don't have a bias against a film that is truly adult in every sense of the word, this film will be right up your alley.