Nymphomaniac: Vol. I (2013) Reviews

• Hey! Like - Hello!!?? All That Fuss Over This!!??

  strong-122-4788852017-11-05

  Ho-hum!... Well - Here we go again!.... Nymphomaniac, like "Shame" and "Looking For Mister Goodbar", is yet another sordid, unsavoury and sneering look at the consequences that are apparently supposed to result from excessive promiscuity. When it comes to sheer heavy-handedness - This shamelessly preachy, little picture self-righteously tells the viewer that having lots of sex with many partners is a hateful thing (so don't you dare love it). This is the sort of movie that neither stimulates the mind nor arouses the libido. Nope. It absolutely numbs both. If you are expecting Nymphomaniac to live up to its title as being an intensely pleasant and wildly erotic experience, you are definitely in for a major disappointment. Incompetently directed by Lars Von Trier (who must be an utterly despicable prig) - Nymphomaniac amounted to being nothing but a dreary, little soap opera (with lots of graphic sex thrown in for good measure) that took 4 frickin' hours to get its shallow, sex-hating point across..... Sheesh! Like - Hey! Give me a break, already!

• Aweful, Disgusting, Obnoxious

  marco19852018-02-18

  Simply tedious, full of extraordinarily disgusting scenes. Such an ultra-long so-called movie about nonsense, without a particular target or message. Might be useful for perverts. Total waste of time; happy that I paid no money to watch it.

• The Work of a Genius !

  rondo8982014-03-28

  You will, I sincerely hope, not be offended if I were to speculate that you were enticed into inquiring into this movie and, for that matter, even reading this very review, because of the movie's title, yes? And the title obviously reflects on the movie's content which is focused on the reproductive arts. And, I shall further speculate that were the movie instead titled, say, "Existentialism" or such, and the story concerned a group of nuns who begin to question their faith, you wouldn't be reading this at all, would you? Of course you know that von Trier is a celebrated director, but you didn't quite get around to seeing his masterpiece Dogville, did you? Nor, I suspect, have you seen his quirky 2007 cinema, The Boss of It All. In fact, the only reason you are even remotely interested in "Nymphomaniac" is that it depicts venery in an explicit manner. Confess! It's all true, isn't it? Wait! Keep reading! Don't go away! It's OK! I know you're not like that, because you have standards. You would never watch or read porn. That's so . . . so . . . so >degrading< and low-class. But since you're a mature adult, very open minded and not bound by the strictures of organized religion, you have no objection to serious cinema with erotic content, do you? I mean, as long as it's tastefully done? I'm here to assure you that "Nymphomaniac" is >not< pornography, because none of the actresses (or actors, mustn't be sexist here) have had any breast augmentation, nor do they wear cosmetics in the manner of slatternly women. For that matter, rest secure in the knowledge that absolutely nothing arousing occurs during any of the movie. No pleasure whatsoever, so it's safe. Your dog could watch it and not begin to look at you funny. That's why von Trier is, without question, an absolute genius. Sex is one of the few natural pleasures we enjoy here in this vale of tears, and just as the finest minds of industry have ruined the joys of victualry and turned the simple act of eating into a problem, the brilliance of of von Trier is that he has ruined sex. "Joe," the protagonist of the movie, has sex frequently, but she doesn't enjoy it at all, and von Trier does his best to make certain that you don't either. If you think about it, that's not such an easy feat. Suppose that you were given a camera, a crew and a group of attractive actors who don't mind nudity and simulating sex acts and were told to make a movie depicting venery, it would be difficult for you to make something completely unpleasant to watch. But von Trier has accomplished something you could never do: in this movie, no one has any pleasure. ex is presented as something perverse and unpleasant. "Joe" only engages in it because she's emotionally disturbed, or because her domineering girlfriend made her do it, or because of some Freudian mumbo- jumbo, and she obviously dislikes each experience, starting with the first brief penetration that hurts her. >SPOILER ALERT!< Don't fall for the brief scenes near the end, of her actually enjoying her three lovers. Those are fantasies she tells in response to having Bach played for her. The music of J. S. Bach is the sublime representation of empyreal purity, and Bach fathered twenty children, so it's good, clean, church-sanctioned, procreative sex, not the naughty fun kind. (Ooo, look! He's bathing her! How lovely! How clean! How innocuous! What movie is this?) But as soon as the music stops, she announces, while in union, "I feel nothing." The hypothetical sex movie you would write and direct would be unlikely to have acting that is as bland, tedious and affectless as the acting in "Nymphomaniac," but that's the way Lars von Trier wants it, because viewing good acting would be a pleasure to watch, and he wants to drain anything enjoyable out. I can imagine him shouting direction, "No! No! Make it even more lifeless! More monotonous!" An obvious exception to this is the salient performance by Uma Thurman, but in that scene, the fine actress is introduced for the sole purpose of making a deliberately unpleasant situation even more disturbing. It goes on for an excruciatingly long time, because von Trier wants to rub your nose in the message: sex ruins lives and makes people miserable. The scene is comedic, but only in the way slapstick is. Von Trier is not the first director to make a movie depicting sex as repulsive. The late Ken Russell also wrote and directed movies with that effect. Like this movie, Russell's movies were also promoted by ads and posters featuring an enticing shot of a woman in ecstasy, but that was just to lure you in. The movie itself taught you a lesson of rue. It is, after all, the glorious puritanical heritage of those of us of Northern European descent. We're not like those filthy people down there in the tropical climes, going at it like they was rabbits. Shame, shame, double shame on their gratification and pleasure! No wonder God punishes them! All the enthusiastic reviews here are written under the pretense that there is some profound message embedded in this movie (especially the bedpan scene). The profound message is that sex must be presented strictly in terms of social isolation and as a manifestation of emotional disturbance. "Joe," represents all the repressed feelings of guilt and shame metastasizing deep within you. After all, if sex were depicted in a uniformly joyous light, you'd have to go to some sleazy site where they'd rip-off your credit card information.

• Bl()()dy b()ring.

  BA_Harrison2017-11-19

  A man, Seligman (Stellan Skarsgård), finds a woman, Joe (Charlotte Gainsbourg), beaten and bruised in a snowy alleyway. He takes her to his grotty little apartment where she recounts her life story in which she cannot keep her knickers on for more than a few minutes. 'Am I boring you?' asks sex addict Joe in the middle of Lars Von Trier's Nymph()maniac: Vol. I. Why yes… yes, you are, you tedious little bint, and so is everyone else in this pseudo-intellectual art-house porn flick aimed at chin-stroking perverts who want to be seen as cultured while getting their kicks. As you might have guessed, I loathed every single frame of this incredibly boring piece of pretentious X-rated garbage, and all those that made it possible. I hope that none of you ever work again. It's not that I'm averse to the odd spot of cinematic filth, only when it's as pompous and painfully prolonged as this film, which, together with Vol. 2, clocks in at well over four hours. I wonder how many people who paid to see this first volume actually bothered to go and see the next instalment. I'm guessing not many.

• Wondering if you should watch this film?

  Anon_A_Mouse2014-03-18

  Don't. Your time is far too valuable. This film features unsimulated sex of pornographic actors digitally edited onto the parts of the real actors. So if you're looking for smut, you should instead watch a production from the "Silicone Valley" (or wherever it is the porn industry heads out of now). At least you won't have to labor through pretentious dialogue just to see some real action. It gets painful--the dialogue. There's a part in the movie where Skarsgard's character tries to rationalize the protagonist's nymphomania via the Fibonacci sequence. It really doesn't add anything meaningful to the plot, it's just von Trier trying to convince you that he went to college. No, I'm only half kidding. Read the spoiler. *SPOILER* Assuming you don't heed my warning, and still decide to waste your time watching this film, then I won't won't give away too much, but Skarsgard's dialogue is supposed to build you up so you can be shocked by the, like, totally ironic ending of Vol. II...As if you couldn't see that coming, or as if you'll even care at that point. Just be glad it's over so you can go back to watching real porn ;) *END OF SPOILER* And if you're looking for a film that debases contemporaries and challenges social taboos, well...I guess you can say this film does that, or at least attempts to. It's all pretty shallow, though, and really comes off as an excuse to feature unsimulated sex in a movie full of renowned actors. I would not feel so strongly about this if the actors' performances weren't so laughable. I might have even forgiven von Trier if the characters were redeeming or at least believable. For start, LaBeouf's character speaks with an accent not of this world. And Slater's performance as the aged father is comparable to a parody straight out of SNL. Without giving away spoilers, I'll just say I couldn't find one character I could sympathize/empathize with, because they were either too dull, too deplorable, or too comical. Want to see a real art film? Un Chien Andalou, because this isn't art. And from a contemporary film's standpoint, there's really nothing to justify the extremes it has to reach in order to tell its story. Don't do it. Or do it, I don't care. I did my good deed for the day.