Nymphomaniac: Volume I and Volume II

Danish writer-director Lars von Trier is now too old to be called an enfant terrible, but he remains cinema's most blatant provocateur, striving here to challenge what he sees as modern squeamishness about sex, while filming in his usual artsy but increasingly unsubtle manner. Not surprisingly, however, even the most sexually explicit of intercourse shots grow tedious over the four hours of this two-part epic centering on Joe (Charlotte Gainsbourg), who is found—beaten in an alley—by a good Samaritan named Selgiman (Stellan Skarsgård) and taken to his apartment. Here, Joe relates her life story, which essentially involves a succession of sexual encounters, beginning with her younger self (played by Stacy Martin) losing her virginity, and continuing through a wide range of experiments that culminate in the assault that begins the film. Naturally, the entire running-time can't be devoted to graphic sex, so von Trier adds subplots and ancillary characters to the mix, while also varying the tone—balancing very rough episodes with moments of surprising tenderness and jolts of unsettling humor. Also featuring Christian Slater, Shia LaBeouf, Jamie Bell, Uma Thurman, Willem Dafoe, and Connie Nielsen, Nymphomaniac ultimately comes across as an almost desperate attempt to shock, a film that will inevitably feed the already widespread criticism of the director as a misogynist. Still, this is the work of a renowned and highly influential filmmaker, and should therefore be considered a strong optional purchase for more adventurous collections. [Note: Blu-ray extras include extended director's cuts of both volumes, behind-the-scenes featurettes on “The Characters” (10 min.), “The Director” (9 min.), and “The Sex” (7 min.), an AXS TV segment (3 min.), and trailers. Bottom line: the extended cuts bring added characterization, but Von Trier's blatantly provocative Nymphomaniac is still very much an uneven work with even more sexually-explicit material.] (F. Swietek)