Nymphomaniac, Vol I

Hoo, boy. Here I go. I am about to watch a movie called Nymphomaniac, VOL 1. That tells us that there are two volumes. Oh jeez, this is going to be something weird alright.

Directed by Lars von Trier, who gave us Melancholia, which I hated, and AntiChrist, which I don’t really want to see. This is supposed to be the end of some sort of some Depression Trilogy with the other two movies, so that doesn’t seem cheery.

I also know the original version of this movie was not split into two parts, but five and a half hours long in one go. That is a shit ton of movie. A movie about sex. For the two parts, about 90 extra minutes was cut overall, giving us the 2 two hour films.

I will try my best to be a grown up about all of this.

It was also pretty hard to find some PG pictures. Gotta have some standards.

Joe (Charlotte Gainsbourg) has done a lot in her life. Sometimes, multiple people at the same time. That’s right, Joe, a woman, liked sex. Get over it prudes.

But now she has found herself lying homeless in the streets. Thankfully, Seligman (Stellan Skarsgard), a local, has taken her off the streets to get her some food and help, in exchange for her life story.

So that is exactly what we get, or at least half of it in this first volume. We learn about her family, in particular her father (Christian Slater). He was a nice guy, and stop it, stop where your mind is going. A movie about sex doesn’t mean everything is about sex, he could just be nice.

We found about her experiencing sexuality as a kid, losing her virginity to Jerome (Shia LaBeouf), as a teen (Stacy Martin) entering public sex competitions with her friend (Sophie Kennedy Clark), breaking up marriages making irate wives (Uma Thurman) and even being a prostitute for awhile.

All of it being told, while Seligman relates his own stories and tales he has heard to her experiences.

Although his experiences don’t involve too many train gang bangs.

Hey, this movie has a lot of intense subject matter, so I will try to break it down.

At least in volume 1, they are not making an argument that her life is horrible due to her addiction to sex. Or at least, not from what I can tell. She doesn’t get shunned for being promiscuous, she is just able to more or less live out her life. Sure, she gets upset and sad over events and some are related to sex, but it isn’t the cause of all of her problems.

It also isn’t a porno. Sure, there is sex in the movie. And some of it graphic in nature. You might watch it and go “Holy shit, that is real sex. In a movie! I saw penetration!” Well, apparently all of the sex scenes were done through CGI stuff. So all of the sex scenes were set up very specifically, needing certain angles and shots for what was planned. And then it looked really real, making it a bit uncomfortable, but it wasn’t.

So how about the movie? Well, as a stand alone volume, I think it had some strong moments and some weak ones. There are five to six stories that are told, so of course not all of them will be hit or miss. But yeah, about 50-50 for me.

Kind of interesting film, didn’t go super hard in the first volume, so wondering where the rest of her story is going. By itself? It’s okay.