Nympho­ma­ni­ac

For­get the head­line-grab­bing sex­ploita­tion-based mar­ket­ing images that have been glee­ful­ly cir­cu­lat­ed online. The slim­line ver­sion (two times two-hour vol­umes instead of the director’s pre­ferred five-and-a-half hour cut) of Lars von Trier’s digres­sive, char­ac­ter-dri­ven odyssey may show a lot of naked fun times, but it is more deeply con­cerned with lone­li­ness, self-loathing and what becomes of a per­son whose behav­iour takes them beyond the lim­its of polite society.

Vol­ume One begins on an exquis­ite snowy evening. Soft pow­der set­tles on rooftops in a clas­si­cal­ly framed mon­tage of estab­lish­ing shots. Drip­ping sounds lead the cam­era down from sky to the alley­way where Joe (Char­lotte Gains­bourg) is lying bat­tered and bruised. As in Melan­cho­lia, von Tri­er rel­ish­es book­end­ing the grimy world of human suf­fer­ing with scenes of nat­ur­al grace.

Selig­man (Stel­lan Skars­gård in his least creepy von Tri­er role to date) chances upon Joe and takes her back to his sparse bach­e­lor pad for tea, ten­der­ness and, after some coax­ing, her life sto­ry, which unfolds in eight titled chap­ters. Between each chap­ter we return to Joe and Selig­man in their sin­gle the­atri­cal loca­tion, the for­mer argu­ing that a life ded­i­cat­ed to wild sexs­capades has trans­formed her into a bad per­son while the lat­ter draws on a well of schol­ar­ly knowl­edge to explain that her behav­iour is not abhor­rent and has reflec­tions in his­to­ry, nature and lit­er­a­ture. Some of Seligman’s par­al­lels are so imag­i­na­tive and recount­ed with such enthu­si­asm that the sever­i­ty of Joe’s self-lac­er­at­ing nar­ra­tive is blown to smithereens in bursts of pure, joy­ful imagination.

A suc­ces­sion of child actress­es end­ing in impres­sive 22-year-old new­com­er Sta­cy Mar­tin play Joe in the flash­backs for all of Vol­ume One and some of Vol­ume Two. Joe’s nympho­ma­nia is pre­sent­ed first as unde­fined desire, then as the expres­sion of female pow­er, then as a war against love. ​“For every 100 crimes com­mit­ted in the name of love there is only one com­mit­ted in the name of sex,” is the rationale.

Yet, sur­pris­ing­ly (for a film with a poster cam­paign full of faces dur­ing cli­max) there is a chap­ter – Jerôme – ded­i­cat­ed exclu­sive­ly to love, an emo­tion that dis­com­forts Joe. ​“Love appeals to the low­est instinct wrapped up in lies,” she says. Plain-speak­ing denun­ci­a­tions of the world’s most roman­ti­cised emo­tion cre­ates a Her­zog-like tone of chaos, espe­cial­ly as Joe seeks solace from her feel­ings in nature, rumi­nat­ing on the trees that, some­what uncon­vinc­ing­ly, were beloved by her father (Chris­t­ian Slater).

Fam­i­ly life is thread­ed through Vol­ume One in an attempt to root Joe to con­ven­tion­al real­i­ty but it nev­er tru­ly belongs. Joe is a myth­ic char­ac­ter, a fan­ci­ful ves­sel for fas­ci­nat­ing and under-explored psy­cho­sex­u­al mus­ings. What if the only truth that mat­tered was erot­ic? In Vol­ume One, part­ly due to the unblem­ished beau­ty of Mar­tin and part­ly because youth is the most for­giv­ing time of anyone’s descent into dark­ness, this truth is pho­to­genic and – heartache aside – a joy­ful ride. Uma Thur­man is on fire as a jilt­ed wife and even Shia LaBeouf pulls his weight as a baf­fled hunk. Ger­man indus­tri­al met­allers Ramm­stein roar over the begin­ning and end cred­its and an edit­ed pre­view of Vol­ume Two stokes antic­i­pa­tion for what is to come.

Vol­ume Two, it turns out, is a dark­er beast pos­ing dark­er ques­tions: What if desire for increas­ing­ly less palat­able grat­i­fi­ca­tions was the only abid­ing moti­va­tion for liv­ing? What if these appetites exist­ed in a humane char­ac­ter with the abil­i­ty to judge them­selves? In the clash between super­ego and id, Nympho­ma­ni­ac finds a com­pelling angle even as the flash­backs become more far-fetched and ram­bling. Of the addi­tion­al star turns, Jamie Bell is the most mem­o­rable, with one hol­low-eyed sweep of a stick ban­ish­ing Bil­ly Elliot from existence.

A dark chem­istry burns between him and Gains­bourg (who has tak­en over as Joe) that is not felt between her and grat­ing, irrel­e­vant char­ac­ters, L (Willem Dafoe) and P (Mia Goth). Yet as demand­ing obscu­ri­ty takes over in the rec­ol­lect­ed sto­ries the recur­ring scenes between Gains­bourg and Skars­gård con­tin­ue to sparkle with vital­i­ty. It’s clear (and LVT has con­firmed) that we’re wit­ness­ing a moral argu­ment between two sides of the Nympho­ma­ni­ac creator’s mind and in the hands of his trust­ed col­lab­o­ra­tors it plays out as raw, per­son­al and loaded.

The depic­tion of sex is at all times a nar­ra­tive­ly essen­tial illus­tra­tion of Joe’s call­ing, chron­i­cling the light, dark, fun­ny and painful places that it takes her. 90 min­utes are miss­ing from this ver­sion and we can only guess at what this feature’s worth of miss­ing run-time adds to the pic­ture. ​‘Nympho­ma­nia’ and its clin­i­cal alter­na­tive label ​‘sex addic­tion’ are toyed with and it is down to the view­er to decide where the line is between a healthy appetite and some­thing that might be deemed more pathological.

The film is not a per­fect work and vac­il­lates great­ly in qual­i­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly in Vol­ume Two, but the suc­cess­ful sequences are so rich in thought-pro­vok­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tions of big sub­jects and so dis­tinc­tive­ly the work of its sin­gu­lar and taboo-flout­ing direc­tor that it all makes for essen­tial viewing.