Butler's Cinema Scene

Charlotte Gainsbourg in “Nymphomaniac”

“NYMPHOMANIAC” My rating: C (Opening April 25 at the Screenland Armour)

241 minutes | No MPAA rating

You can’t ignore a film by Lars von Trier. No matter how much you might want to.

The guy’s a genius, but a twisted one. He’s a first-class visual artist and a narrative anarchist who presents himself  as a cinematic provocateur. (I sometimes view him as a child playing with his own feces.) The beauty often on display in his films must be balanced against the inescapable fact that he’s awesomely misanthropic.

In his last movie, the spectacularly good “Melancholia,” von Trier destroyed our planet and everyone on it…but he did it with such artistic high style that we are seduced nonetheless.

His latest, “Nymphomaniac” (how’s that for a punch-in-the-mouth title?), is a much rockier affair. It’s the story of one woman’s tormented sexual history, complete with nudity, erect penises, and even a few fleeting shots of real sex acts. It’s almost as if von Trier is daring us to keep watching the screen.

Yet the film isn’t the least bit erotic (just another sign of von Trier’s perversity). One leaves this four-hour experience with the feeling that sex is hell.

Of course, in von Trier’s world most everything is hell.

(“Nymphomania” currently is available on Time-Warner on-demand. It’s presented as two 2-hour films, each of which must be purchased separately. Vol. I costs about $7; Vol. II costs nearly $10. In some cities it’s being shown theatrically, but none of Kansas City’s art theaters have it listed as an upcoming attraction.)

In an alley in a big city, a man discovers a woman lying beaten on the concrete. He helps her to his tacky bachelor apartment, gives her a pair of his pajamas, and puts her to bed.

But the woman, named Joe (Charlotte Gainsbourg), doesn’t sleep. She engages in a long conversation with her benefactor, Seligman (Stellan Skarsgard). Describing herself as a terrible person, Joe devotes the night to a long exploration of her life up to this point – especially her obsession with sex.

Stacy Martin as the young Joe

In a sense, “Nymphomaniac” is two movies. The one taking place in the present is a complex, often brilliantly written conversation between two oddly compelling characters.

Joe seems determined to shock Seligman with tales of her past escapades. She maintains that “Love is a sham.” But if anything he is supportive, arguing that she’s way too hard on herself.

From time to time their talk veers away from sex into a variety of subjects: fly fishing, polyphonic music, numbers theory. The owlish Seligman, an asexual virgin, has little real-life experience. But he’s a voracious reader, which makes him a compelling conversationalist.

This “Sheherazade”-like situation makes up the main movie. But scattered throughout are flashbacks to Joe’s earlier life.

We see her childhood with a loving father (Christian Slater) and an icy mother (Connie Nielsen). As a teen (played by Stacy Martin) she discovers her sexuality and makes a game of seducing as many men and boys as she can.

She has a long on-and-off relationship with Jerome (Shia LaBeouf), who takes her virginity and, years later, becomes her boss and lover at an office. One day he vanishes, only to reappear a decade later, becoming Joe’s husband and the father of her child.

But through it all, Joe is a slave to her sexual needs. She has so many lovers she has to carefully organize her day to make time for all of them. Later she loses all sexual feeling and finds respite at the hands of a boyish sadist (Jamie Bell) who calls her “Fido” and metes out punishment with the clinical detachment of a lab scientist. In order to meet him she leaves her infant son alone at home. (Hmmmm…maybe she is a terrible person.)

She has an affair with a man whose wife (Uma Thurman) shows up at the apartment with the couple’s three sons to throw a world-class meltdown.

Jamie Bell as the sadist

Joe arranges an anonymous tryst with an African immigrant who speaks no English, then is a bit shocked when the guy shows up with his brother-in-law for a little two-on-one action. She joins a therapy group for sex addicts, but soon turns contemptuous of the run-of-the-mill obsessions held by the other members.

A shadowy criminal facilitator (Willem Dafoe) recognizes Joe’s psychological insights into men and gets her started in the debt collection business. She acts as a female Fagin to a teenage girl (Sophie Kennedy Clark) who becomes her protégé and lover.

There’s a lot of sex in “Nymphomaniac,” none of which looks like much fun. Indeed, that seems to be the point.

Nor is there any moral in sight. Perhaps the closest we come to one is when Seligman advises Joe that if she were a man, most of her behavior would be shrugged off. Not that this is a tremendously original thought.

I can’t decide if Gainsbourg, long-faced and with a boyish physique, is a great actress or a very limited one. (Perhaps she’s great within a limited range?) But apparently she’ll do anything for von Trier.

Of the other actors, Skarsgard is the most interesting.

But despite some visually compelling moments and some intriguing rumination on a variety of topics, “Nymphomaniac” leaves us cold. Sexuality should be liberating, but this film is a pretty good argument for the chaste life.

| Robert W. Butler

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