• Talk about the power of the number three- this is the third film in Danish auteur and enfant terrible Lars von Trier’s Depression trilogy (Antichrist, Melancholia). The Depression trilogy itself is actually von Trier’s third trilogy. He made the Europa trilogy first in the 1980s and then The Golden Heart trilogy from 1996 to 2000 where he rose to international fame.
  • Nymphomaniac is one film that had to be broken up, like Kill Bill, into Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 for running time and commercial purposes. All told it runs just about exactly four hours long. It is a fine film- but a steep decline in artistic quality after the first two legs of the trilogy.

The film features a strong opening- the running water tracking shot is pure Tarkovsky. Lars von Trier uses metal music and captures his heroine Joe (young Joe played by Stacy Martin and older Joe played by Charlotte Gainsbourg) lying in the alley in perhaps the film’s finest cinematic painting.

  • Stellan Skarsgård plays Seligman. He finds her and the two characters start talking about Joe’s life. “The story will be long”… “it will be moral”.
  • Chapter One has the tidepool (another Tarkovskyism) shot and heavy voiceover from Gainsbourg. Some crude editing actually in one spot which is strange as von Trier is an excellent technician.
  • One wonders if the fishing sequence influenced Adam McKay’s Vice. Lars is very cutaway heavy here- stream of consciousness editing- “if you have wings why not fly?” and he cuts to a plane. In another sequence he has a visual design of parallel parking and in another the Fibonacci sequence. This is a new style for von Trier- and certainly not one used in the first two films of the trilogy. This is not Dogme 95 and it is not overly beautiful. The House That Jack Built (2018) would be made in a similar style to Nymphomaniac– they combine the provocative with the playful in a cutaway montage-heavy aesthetic. There is a montage of male genitals to set to classical music. Some sections of the film are simply tedious- others (like the discussion of Edgar Allen Poe’s death) are fascinating.

Lars is very cutaway heavy here- stream of consciousness editing- “if you have wings why not fly?” and he cuts to a plane. In another sequence he has a visual design of parallel parking and in another the Fibonacci sequence.

  • Chapter four is delirium using heavy black and white.
  • Some of the casting is curious- poor Christian Slater is doing his best with the English accent.
  • Skarsgård’s Seligman is an intellectual- perhaps a bit of a von Trier surrogate.
  • A little past halfway through the film Gainsbourg takes over the role of Joe from Martin.
  • In Vol. 2 von Trier recreates the sublime Antichrist opening (there is nothing in Nymphomaniac that touches this sequence) with Handel music but modifies the ending.

Chapter seven is “The Mirror”- Tarkovsky again of course as Joe levitates- Eastern church icon from Tarkovsky as well- the bent tree is Bergman’s The Virgin Spring (1960).

  • Misogyny from von Trier- another brave performance from an actor in his film- and Gainsbourg has been in all three films of the trilogy.
  • Lars returns to the best frame in the film again with Joe down on the ground in an alley
  • This is Stellan Skarsgård’s fifth archiveable collaboration with von Trier.
  • Recommend but not in the top 10 of 2013