Movie Review: Nymphomaniac

nymphomaniacOnce I was lying on the side of the road: beaten, bloody and unconscious. A kind soul came to me and helped me up, insisting he call an ambulance to help. I refuse, saying I’m okay and will recover quickly, but the man insists on helping and taking me to his once. Once there, I decide to tell him about my sex life.

Instead of being confused by this rather strange turn of events, he excitedly decides to compare my life to fly fishing. We both think we are extremely smart and sophisticated by coming up with these ideas, imagining our comparisons are important and meaningful, but honestly they’re probably some very bizarre contrivances that contain little to no meaning whatsoever. Funny, that’s exactly how Lars Von Trier’s “Nymphomaniac: Volume I” plays out so well.

I have to say, this is my second exposure to the controversial director and I have to say I’m still unimpressed. My only previous encounter with the filmmaker was “Anti-Christ” starring Willem Dafoe, a film heavily exploitative in hilariously obvious symbolism and blatant sex sequences. I thought they felt separated from the narrative and seemed pointless, because it t comes off like the director simply wanted to see the leads nude.

“Nymphomaniac: Volume I” is a lot like the “Anti-Christ.” It’s as contrived and forceful to drive the narrative to various sexual encounters as a porn parody. The only thing that separates this from a raunchy porn parody is professional-grade cinematography and two narrators who pick spontaneous topics to compare the described situations. These topics (such as how fly fishing relates to sexual encounters, the relevance of 3+5, the Devil’s Chord, etc.) may have been more relevant if they were more cleverly integrated as subtle themes into the narrative, making the audiences think beyond just getting sweaty over the sex scenes. The two narrators deliberately spell out the meaning of every theme presented, complete with visual cues to make sure the point gets across, doing all the work for the audience.

Nymphomaniac-Movie-Poster

 

Much like the story itself, the actors are uniformly unconvincing and dull. Shia LaBeouf’s frequent appearances are hilariously unconvincing as he tries to imitate a British accent. Charlotte Gainsburg is a blank slate, hardly portraying any form of emotion unless in the act of sexual intercourse, and Stellan Skarsgard is, Stellan Skarsgard.

There is a lot of nudity in this movie, no censoring over any part of the human body in this motion picture. Those who enjoy seeing two people in such situations with professional-grade cinematography to set the mood may enjoy this movie. The rest of the world has the Internet, because there is hardly any additional substance beyond  a simple pornographic video.

I give “Nymphomaniac: Volume I” 2 stars out of 5

About Brady Gorman