Nymphomanic
Director: Lars von Trier
Cast: Charlotte Gainsbourg, Stellan Skarsgard, Stacy Martin, Shia Labeouf, Christian Slater, Jamie Bell, Uma Thurman, Willem Dafoe
Rating: (R18)
3 stars (out of 5)
Occasionally in this job, you have to take one for the team (so to speak), even if that means watching nearly four hours of Lars von Trier.
Indeed after the confronting drivel that was Anti Christ and von Trier's brain explosion at Cannes, what chance is there that his latest film, which has been being labelled as ''porn'', will have any merit?
Spread over two volumes at a total of 241 minutes for the edited cinematic screenings, Nymphomaniac is certainly no casual pre-dinner date film.
Aside from the hoopla surrounding the explicit sex, it takes a certain commitment to sit through such a convoluted exposition to find out how a 50-year-old woman is found battered and bruised in an alleyway.
As a device, the set-up with Jo (Charlotte Gainsbourg) explaining her life of sexual conquests to bachelor Seligman (Stellan Skarsgard) is very odd, especially when the extremely learned Seligman sits benignly bedside, soaking up every lurid detail looking for parallels with fly-fishing.
Though, strangely enough, it works.
It should also be noted that the cinematic release of Nymphomaniac is hardly the most sexually explicit mainstream film made.
So anyone seeking a cheap thrill should look elsewhere.
Rather, von Trier uses sexual compulsion to ask questions about morality, infidelity, liberation and illness.
Nymphomaniac is extremely thought-provoking and, importantly for von Trier, manages to pretty much rail against everything he doesn't care for in mainstream cinema.
Best thing: Uma Thurman's raging performance as the spurned wife of a cheating husband.
Worst thing: Watching the film and wondering what is prosthetic and what isn't.
See it with: Anyone not put off by gratuitous genitalia.
