Almost noon local time. Carol is on the
phone with her sister Linda. You have completed four of your five exercises for
the week. You watched an intellectual and artistic film last night on Netflix, Nymphomania,
Part I. What do you have to say about it? – Amorella
1201
hours. I like to try art films, some are interesting. If you look at the title
it appears to be porn (but on Netflix?) – it is about the human condition that goes
somewhat deeper than the graphic scenes depicted. One of the graphic scenes is
on the death of her father, a medical doctor, – very, very sad – what a way to
leave this life. The sex scenes are bluntly graphic and as such are not so
erotic as one might predispose. And, perhaps that is the point – seen from this
poor woman’s condition as she tells her story to an older, asexual man who
helped her up from the street one night and gave her shelter. She tells him her
stories and he tells her his. Both try to find a common thread in the assorted
human condition(s) of each. I like the tone, which is also intellectually
graphic – for instance, she talks about the first sexual years (15+) and he
talks about how much he loves fly fishing. His flat is full of books and he has
a mathematically oriented and literary mind. What a great way to use juxtapositioning
throughout the film. The film is not porn, which is the reason it is on Netflix.
Some of the Netflix reviews said the film was boring. That struck my interest
so I finally watched it. Here is a professional review.
** **
NYMPHOMANIAC:
VOL. I 4)
Cast Characters:
•
Charlotte Gainsbourg Joe, the main character
•
Stellan Skarsgård as
Seligman
•
Stacy Martin as
Young Joe
•
Shia LaBeouf as
Jerôme
•
Christian Slater as
Joe's Father
•
Uma Thurman as
Mrs. H
•
Sophie Kennedy Clark as
B
•
Connie Nielsen as
Joe's Mother
•
Director: Lars von Trier
|By Sheila
O'Malley
March 21, 2014 |
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The first poster released for Lars von Trier's
"Nymphomaniac" had a Brady-Bunch structure, with images of all the
main actors stacked on top of one another, each individual lost in the exact
moment of sexual climax. The poster was eye-catching and funny, private and
exhibitionistic at the same time.
Sex may be "natural" and "good" (according
to George Michael), but seeing sex onscreen (either actual or simulated) is
often a game-changer. We all may do it, but how do you put it onscreen in a way
that is representative of the mess/humor/actuality of it? How do you represent
sex and also incorporate emotion? Human beings are often very silly about sex,
especially when they get too philosophical about it. It's like getting
philosophical about a sneeze. Unlike a sneeze, sex carries lifetimes of associations
with it, and yet naked writhing bodies onscreen often flatten out into a
general cliché representing a hazy idea of the act.
The best part of Lars von Trier's fascinating, engaging and
often didactic "Nymphomaniac" is that, despite the sometimes-grim
tone and bleak color palate, it's an extremely funny film, playful, even. It's
outrageous and provocative, intellectual and primal at sometimes the same time.
It features of a lot of what looks like actual sex (although we are told in the
end credits that the penetrative sex depicted was done by body doubles), and
while it is obviously interested in sex, it is more interested in how we talk
about sex, how we incorporate it into our identity (or don't). Similar to
"Melancholia," von Trier's masterful
examination of depression, and how it feels like an outside force working on
those who suffer from it,
"Nymphomaniac" (which will be released in multiple
volumes) sees sex through the eyes of a damaged woman who has made it her
mission in life to remove sex from our "love-fixated society". She
says, flatly, "Love is blind. No, it's worse. It distorts something. It's
something I never asked for."
Charlotte Gainsbourg plays the androgynously
named Joe, who, at the opening of Volume I, is discovered lying bruised and
battered in a dark alley by Seligman (Stellan Skarsgård). Seligman takes her in,
tucks her in bed, and gives her tea. He is a complete stranger and he asks what
happened. She warns him up front that it will not be a nice story, that she is
a bad person. He assures her that nothing she tells him will shock him. He
thinks she may be being too hard on herself. There's something almost
unfinished about Joe, a flat affect, as she insists that her behavior has been
beyond-the-pale. As the rain pours down, she tells him her story.
It's a blatant theatrical device, an artificial framing, and von
Trier uses it unabashedly. The film is broken up into titled-sections, each
with their own narrative thru-line and tone. Occasionally, we go back to the
bedroom with Seligman and Joe, when he interrupts her to ask a question about
what she just said, or he interrupts to go off on his own tangent of thought.
He is not freaked out by what Joe tells him. On the contrary, he is delighted
by it, and seems delighted by the opportunity to talk about all of these
important matters in an in-depth spit-balling kind of way. Seligman is a big
fly-fisher, and much of what Joe describes, her various tactics with men, her
use of different kinds of "lures", reminds him of his favorite hobby.
Part of the delight in "Nymphomaniac" is its
disinterest in being anything other than fully itself. That
"self" may change on a moment-to-moment basis, which makes
"Nymphomaniac" a dizzying experience. The film is sometimes stylized,
other times totally realistic. Mathematical equations appear on the screen,
counting out the sexual pumps from Joe's first lover. There are intricate
diagrams of a parallel parking job, showing the swooping parabolae necessary to
fit a certain car into a certain spot. A chalkboard lists questions all
starting with the letter "W". There are long conversations about
Edgar Allan Poe, Bach, and Fibonacci numbers. "Nymphomaniac" requires
an audience to submit to these segues, to go with the flow, to hand over
control.
In the flashback sections of Volume I, the young Joe is played
by Stacy Martin, being raised by a "cold
bitch" of a mother, and a kindly doctor father (Christian Slater) who passes on to his
daughter a love of flora and fauna. She discovers early on that when she
touches herself between her legs, she gets what she calls "the sensation".
Joe views her virginity as something that needs to be gotten rid of pronto, so
she hits up a local rough-around-the-edges mechanic named Jerome (Shia LaBeouf) to do the deed; he complies with
very little ceremony and no preamble. Jerome keeps entering the film, through
various hard-to-believe coincidences. The mechanic somehow is transformed into
a pencil-pushing office manager. When Jerome re-appears for the third time, Seligman,
still listening, calls Joe on embellishing the story. This is sounding
fictional now, cries Seligman. She must be making this up! Von Trier uses
Brechtian distancing devices like that to comment on his own story, even as he
meticulously sets up each self-contained section. He knows we're going "in
and out" of the action, he knows we're going to have questions and doubt
her reliability as a narrator. In fact, he counts on it.
Young Joe, once she lost her virginity, starts her quest to have
as much sex as she possibly can. Her partner-in-crime for this is a young
friend who is even more daring, and who comes up with various sexual
competitions. They board a train and keep a running tally of how many conquests
they can each make over the course of the night. Joe is amazed to discover how
easy it is. She tells Seligman of her learning curve, the tactics and
strategies she used as she worked that train. Every man is different. She is
cold and calculating about it, and the scene really captures the restlessness
and kamikaze bravery of young girls first trying out their sexual powers
without knowing at all what they are doing. "Nymphomaniac" does not
judge Young Joe and her friend. The only person judging Young Joe is the mature
Joe, wrapped up in blankets, telling Seligman the story.
Every time Seligman interrupts, Joe reminds him that his
feelings about her will change once he hears the whole story. It's a hook, a
tease, the film's own fly-fishing "lure".
In one sequence, Joe relates the difficulties of juggling seven
different lovers. Often the lovers meet at her door, one guy leaving as the
other guy arrives. Things get messy. Joe may be able to separate sex from
emotion (as a matter of fact, that is her goal), but it is not as easy for
others. One guy shows up at her door, holding a couple of suits in dry-cleaning
bags, announcing he has finally left his wife and is moving in. Joe is
horrified, even more so when the scorned wife, known only as Mrs. H. (Uma Thurman, whose manic vicious performance
is one of the film's high points and tips "Nymphomaniac" over into
out-and-out screwball) shows up at the door with her three children. She wants
the boys to see where Daddy has been spending all his time. "Come, boys,
let's go look at the whoring bed!" exclaims Mrs. H. brightly.
The American actors use on-again off-again British accents,
which adds to the blasé humor of the thing. It's not important where these
people are. It's not even important who they are. It's important what they do,
and it's important how they think about what they do. "Nymphomaniac"
does not make the mistake of suggesting that Joe's behavior is connected to a
bad experience in her childhood. This is not a redemption narrative or a trauma
narrative, at least not yet. Sex feels good all on its own; sex is its own
reward.
Seligman sometimes misses the point of Joe's narrative, musing
about how addiction can dull a person's moral apparatus. Joe wants to make sure
she is perfectly clear with him: She embraced sex because of the
"sensation" it provided her. The power she had over men was
secondary. She loves lust, and her lust makes her heartless. Well, it's
a heartless world. Joe sees herself as an outlaw, taking charge of her own
hunger, and as a young woman she and her group of fellow outlaw friends create
a club which has an Erica Jong-like mission statement: "We have the right
be horny." The fact that the club shuns members who sleep with the same
guy twice is an explicit acknowledgement of the bonding emotional power of sex,
something the girls all want to avoid.
Volume I ends on a wrenching note, with Joe at a painful
crossroads in her own sexual philosophy, and scenes from Volume II unfurl
alongside the roll of credits. All of the talk in Volume I about lust and
sensation and "cocks" (we get a gallery of different penises flashing
across the screen) translates into some extremely dreary sex in
"Nymphomaniac", boring, bored, silly, embarrassing. You look at some
of it and think, "What on earth is the point?" None of it is erotic.
All that pounding and thrusting and grinding adds up to a keening unspoken
awareness of the emptiness at the center of humanity, the looming presence of
death, the doomed possibilities of not only connection, but feeling
itself.
Sex can be many
things, it can express love, hate, power, revenge. It can relieve boredom. It
can be overlaid with intellectual considerations, or concerned with concepts
such as consent, objectification, misogyny, the entire history of cultural
baggage people bring into bed with them. "Nymphomaniac: Vol. I"
addresses these heavy topics, but in a way that doesn't feel heavy at all. The
film is an intellectual high-wire act, death-defying, dangerous, entertaining,
and delighting in its own inventiveness and daring.
Selected from -- http://www.rogerebertDOTcom/reviews/nymphomaniac-vol-i-2014
** **
1424
hours. The above review says it all. I’d give Sheila O’Malley an A for this
review if I were teaching a writing course to adults.
Presently you are waiting for Carol at the
community center while she walks. You both had a make-your-own lunch just
before this. – Amorella
1428
hours. The sun is attempting to show itself but the clouds are thick and we are
supposed to get much more rain tonight.
You have begun Part II because, among other
things, you are curious as to how the films conclude. The first one has four
and a half stars out of five and the second, four stars. The main point here is
that you have discovered you can write about such films because you like them
for their artistic sake. Of course in your college days you subscribed to
Playboy but insisted that you also read the articles, which you did. Nothing
much has changed in this regard. It is always important to be able to accept who
you are, warts and all, so to speak. – Amorella
1436
hours. I don’t have warts, but I do have three skin tags on my face. If Kim and
Paul stop by on the way home I am going to have some off-the-counter ‘Compound
W – Freeze’ so he can take them off. It’s not liquid nitrogen but it ought to
do for skin tags.
You’ve made a stop at Kroger’s on
Mason-Montgomery before heading home. We can finish up The Dead – Eleven if you
wish. – Amorella
1455
hours. That’s fine. This is a bit too esoteric; I’d rather Merlyn work up a
monologue – raw souls don’t have much humanity to them.
That’s an understatement, but we’ll fit it
in. – Amorella
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