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2 March
This is a review of Nymphomaniac Vol. II (2013), and follows on from a review of Vol. I
A guess at Nymphomaniac Vol. II from @THEAGENTAPSLEY : does younger Joe's lack of affect suggest a Freudian father / daughter issue ?
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) March 1, 2014
In the catalogue of sexual possibilities*, Vol. II leaves an obvious one unexplored till late, and, even if it did not end as it does (its blackout over imagined action mirrors the opening), it would be hard to conceive (pun intended !) that a night of confession would lead to a radical resolve on Joe’s part, despite the alleged merits of a problem shared.
There are certainly plays that have us believe in the redemptive possibilities of talking till dawn or the like (and, equally, there is Chekhov and works such as Uncle Vanya), and enough of the dialogue even smacks of the stage (both now, between Joe and Seligman, and between Joe and others in her recollection) : whatever therapy goes on here, with what Joe calls Seligman’s digressions (and, as the review of Vol. I identifies in him, her accusing him of not listening), seems like Long Day’s Journey into Night.
The credits confirm that the films were shot in continental Europe, Nordrhein-Westfalen (in Germany) and in Belgium (Ghent ?), despite the ostentatious show of modern-day fivers, and the one-pound notes that ceased circulation in the early 1980s and their predecessors, whereas all that establishes the possibility of Britain is Stacy Martin’s RP way of being matter of fact as younger Joe, and Charlotte Gainsbourg’s very obviously British – if less class-ridden – tones.
Perhaps Lars von Trier seriously intends by these means to pass off other countries as the UK, but the whimsicality of the currency is matched by having Seligman (Stellan Skarsgård) see a conflagration that he does not know about or which Joe has yet to put in context : it is on the screen, and it is as if he reads it from Joe’s mind, just as he does when he decodes her secular transfiguration with The Whore of Babylon and the promiscuous wife of a Roman Emperor. Finding meanings, interpreting things, he seems to live in his head, whereas Joe, if not in her heart, then in her body and its sensations.
In fact, she seems to go to the opposite extreme from being bookish and knowing what everything is, and in her Martin incarnation especially sounds often not so much ironic, as maybe she is meant to be in a ‘cute’ sort of way, as vacuous. Yet in this film we are meant to believe that she is earning at a level where she can make a payment of £1,000 per month beyond the cost of living – or maybe that just sounded a good sum to von Trier, and he does not realize what her salary would have to be…
The film likes to run the gamut of filmic techniques, perhaps just in case we are getting stale, so stock footage of nature is used, which is just before the scene of levitation when Joe has her revelation, and another chapter is edgily hand-held, whereas the two-person scenes with Seligman and Joe have them occupy the space from all angles. Something that Joe says about the number of permutations of the leads of an eight-cylinder engine suggests that trying everything every way seems to be a drive that she shares with von Trier.
It certainly leads to films whose combined running time is a minute more than four hours, but it felt much longer than a night’s worth of narration** :
If @THEAGENTAPSLEY is not much mistaken, Vols I and II of @NymphomaniacUK need only have run to 3h 15mins, maybe just 3h...
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) March 2, 2014
However long it ran, how was this film going to end, when all the talking was done ? With what might seem a cheap comment about what men really think about promiscuous women, not worthy of a typical man, let alone one of apparent education – and which then justified, after the fact, suspicions that all Seligman’s acceptance of Joe’s past actions had been insincere and for other reasons (and he, not Joe, is the predator with his lair and trap) ? What did that leave other than a shattered framing-device for a story of a woman who would say Fill my holes, but maybe had not much else to say, maybe was not always / ever telling the truth… ?
Cynically, if Seligman did not comprehend the nature of consensual sex and take what she said seriously, he had seemed as good a person as any to do so – or was the catharsis of just telling it all sufficient for this therapy to be of lasting value, despite the outcome ? Though the truth is that von Trier wanted to show us this, and chose the device of Joe telling it to Seligman (not her telling us) for its clear advantages, even at the risk of losing part of the audience (no doubt the less worthy part) for this second film.
Post-script
Lars von Trier thanks Andrei Tarkovsky in the credits : is this an acknowledgement, as seems to be the case, that the Bach work for organ that he uses was employed to such effect in Tarkovsky's The Sacrifice (1986) ?
End-notes
* Seen or mentioned are anal sex, masturbation, sadomasochism, lesbian sex, oral sex, double penetration, inter-racial sex, rape, dice sex, masturbating in public, and even intercourse.
** Apparently, the present films originate in response to an edit down to just 90 minutes.
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
