Decent comedy. Probably intentional too.

Stacy Martin was absolutely fantastic in this. I'm sad that I've heard she's not in the second part as much because she made the movie for me. Charlotte Gainsbourg and Uma Thurman were great as well. It is darkly funny, expertly direction and incredibly entertaining. I did however find the fourth chapter to bring it down a bit. Excited to see what happens in the second part.

8/10

Volume one of Nymphomaniac, the controversial-from-its-inception erotic epic by Danish art-house provocateur Lars von Trier, opens with its heroine, Joe (Charlotte Gainsbourg, von Trier's Liv Ullmann), lying bloodied and bruised in an alleyway. She is found by a concerned older gentleman (Stellan Skarsgård), and he brings her to rest and recover at his apartment after she refuses his plea to call an ambulance or the police. There, she decides to reveal to him the story of her life, shaped as it is by her out-of-control sexual compulsion and the volatility it creates within and around her. The first part of the overall enterprise begins with a brief exploration of her childhood curiosities and discoveries and largely focuses on her teenage and post-university years. The youthful Joe is played by a courageous, fresh-faced, and sensitive performer named Stacy Martin in her screen-acting debut, and she is the anchor and star of Nymphomaniac: Volume I regarded as a film unto itself.

Navigating not only sexuality, but also concepts of faith, family, love, mathematics, music, and, in fact, fly fishing, this an experience as dense as it is entertaining and hypnotic. It is a rare feat, a film which, at its most direct and grim, lands its punches with devastating force, but is also always in turn playful, seductive, and shot through with an undeniable and generous amount of humor despite the sobering subject. There is a limit as to how much can be declared after only viewing volume number one of two, other than praising the clear ambition and envelope-pushing magnificence of the direction on display and the general high quality of the performances, but I sense the project is using sex as a vehicle to explore a more profound idea: the contentment and peril of life as a self-devised iconoclast, perhaps. On a more basic, but also important level (since this is a filmed entertainment at the end of the day), Volume I also leaves the audience, or at least this viewer, eager to dive into Volume II and see where the unresolved longings, mysteries, and tensions lead, including the question of how and why Gainsbourg's Joe found herself all but left for dead in a desolate corner of the city.

A

The second part is MUCH worse.

I have read that but I'm hoping that isn't the case. I will be watching it tonight.

Oh and Shia was so sexy in this.

Among other things, the second part is racist. Not in the oh, LOL, let's laugh and joke about it racist sort of way.

lol

Honestly, are the rumors true? We see him clearly having sex?

No, doubles were used for the penetration shots. In the end credits, amidst the caterers, set decorators, etc., there is a list of pornographic performers.

Are you sure that wasn't Shia in the penetration shot though? You CLEARLY saw his face, so if it wasn't it would have had to be put in by CGI or something.

In any case, you do see him full frontal (and he is hard to boot) in the same scene before they have sex.

They superimposed the face of the professional actors onto the doubles/porn stars using computers, yes.

Seriously? embarassing i am sure

Yeah, this is KJ for sure. The discussion on the film very quickly evolves into a debate on Shia LaBeouf's possible sexual activity on film.

Decided to just go ahead and make this the thread for both parts.

so much penis

The second and final volume of Nymphomaniac solidifies the overall enterprise as a masterpiece and a significant contribution to the canon of its creator, Danish writer, director, and provocateur Lars von Trier. Though few might describe Volume I as a gentle or romantic film, it is compared to the conclusion, which is in many ways more brutal, more decadent, more desperate, and laced with even more macabre humor. We saw self-diagnosed nymphomaniac Joe (Charlotte Gainsbourg and, as a teenager and university student, Stacy Martin) come of age and discover her enormous, out-of-control sexuality. We saw her first encounters with love and also with the degenerate and the mad. Now we pursue her into underworlds both sexual and downright criminal, precipitating a final spiral into disorder. As she ages and tries to maintain a domestic life as a wife and mother, her desire is complicated by a more potent dimension of self-hatred and shame, and she is forced to question whether she has or even deserves a place in mainstream society. There are also still moments of bold and playful provocation, including an episode which finds Joe alone in a hotel room with a pair of African brothers arguing in a foreign language. It is a scene which demands we react however we will (based on who are or perhaps where we come from) to the image of a beautiful and frail white female between a pair of muscular, nude men of color and then to interpret our response. There are also mystifying, but intriguing instances of self-reference on the part of the director, including an altered staging of Antichrist's haunting opening sequence.

Now portraying Joe in both the past and the present, the courage and depth of the performance delivered by Gainsbourg comes into focus. This is her third project with von Trier after Antichrist and Melancholia, and the duo now share an undeniable collaborative magic. He has at once punished and elevated her, revealing her as a soulful performer capable of anchoring the extreme spectacles he designs and ensuring humanity is at the forefront despite the audacious concepts and content. Of the many other famous faces gathered to populate this two-part epic, a pair of scene-stealing standouts are introduced in the second volume: Jamie Bell, enigmatic and icy as a dominant sadomasochist, and model Mia Goth in an auspicious acting debut as an isolated and wayward teenager who becomes a protege to Joe in perhaps the film's most disturbing, yet moving storyline, one which gives Joe the chance to regard a reflection of herself (her decisions, her general volatility) in another person, an innocent.

Not least because both volumes are overflowing with metaphors and philosophical asides, Nymphomaniac as a whole will be a film to revisit and contend with for a long time, at least for viewers on its wavelength. If Joe and her sexuality equals the often despairing and nihilistic director and his troubled relationship with the media, then the film is an interesting variation on the redemption story and the implications of the final scenes are devastating and a shade amusing, too.

Loved Volume 1, can't wait to see V2 in theaters next week.

Uma Thurman's scene is phenomenal.

Shia LaBeouf and Christian Slater do indeed have unusual accents (the former's is particularly noticeable), though I do not consider this a problem or a flaw so much as a minor curiosity in an amazing film. Many Lars von Trier productions have an unusual relationship with culture and geography, as if they are at once set in the United States, England, and continental Europe. Often by way of a sound-stage. He is the director who cast the improbable pair of Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg as sisters, and he sent Björk and Catherine Deneuve to "small-town America." I have come to embrace the international-bordering-on-otherworldly quality as a positive idiosyncrasy.

Wasn't Kidman originally gonna play Mrs. H? That would've been interesting.

In my opinion, Shia gives a fine performance in spite of the accent. He has strong chemistry with Stacy Martin. The parallel-parking scene is wonderful.

shia is fucking awful (in this)

he's never been better than he was on even stevens

I didn't really mind Shia in this but to believe Joe was so enamored with him was kinda puzzling. I mean really.

i had the hots bigtime for ren. then i saw her boobs in mirrors 2. still have the hots for her.