Nymphomaniac 1 & 2 – Review

Posted by His Master's Review ⋅ April 5, 2014 ⋅ Leave a comment

Filed Under Nymphomaniac 1 & 2, Transmission

Courtesy Transmission Films
Nymphomaniac-02-photo-by-Christian-Geisnaes

A controversial and nauseatingly comic tale of love, lust, nipples, and penis, Nymphomaniac is disgustingly long even while it essays to wrap the eroticism into gossamer thin veil of philosophic digressions like fly-fishing, Bach, James Bond, Orthodox morality and the like.

Courtesy Transmission Films

Von Trier tries to vindicate Joe’s obsession with abnormally heightened sexual desires and to obliterate from her innermost soul, her deeply set notion of sex is sure to fall like a house of cards; for isn’t this abnormal sex addict – SORRY – nymphomaniac too willingly and too deeply into the mire of Original Sin?

Badly beaten and bruised Joe [Charlotte Gainsbourg] is discovered by Seligman [StellerSkarguard] an ascetic old bachelor who brings her home and tends to her wounds. “I am ashamed of what I became…. but.. it was beyond my control.”

Courtesy Transmission Films
Nymphomaniac-12-photo-by-Christian-Geisnaes

So begins the hollow monotone, a boring 4 hour recital of an erotic tale revolving round the protagonist’s appeasement of sex desires from adolescence to young adulthood, the droning interrupted to let in the flashbacks of orgies better left to porn films and sites.

Nymphomaniac’s lack of solid structure appears deliberately contrived to generate laughs and sighs as the vulnerably sensitive viewer is left to emit gasps.

Courtesy Transmission Films
Nymphomaniac-13-photo-by-Christian-Geisnaes

On the whole Nymphomaniac is a bold and ugly attempt to shock the conscientious audience to come to terms with naked evidence of human frailty.

One would feel Nymphomaniac is certainly better confined to the Net, You Tube, Google or exclusive porn sites rather than being let to prowl free in public domain to corrupt the unwary.