It's not about sex!
Nymphomaniac: Vol. II
Grade: B
Director: Lars von Trier (Run Lola Run)
Screenplay: von Trier
Cast: Charlotte Gainsbourg (Melancholia), Stellan Skarsgard (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo)
Rating: NR
Runtime: 123 min.
by John DeSando
“I'm going to tell you a few stories. All you have to do is listen.” Charlotte Gainsbourg
Nymphomaniac: Vol. II doesn’t end well by any standard. But then, what did I expect as this continuation of sex-addict Joe’s episodic story descends into the hell she started in Vol. I? The most salient point is that her obsession, never fully explained nor probably could be, forces her to give up the real loves of her life, husband Jerome (Shia La Beouf) and child Marcel (Jacob Levin-Christensen), in order to minister to the mania.
She endures physical pain, in an almost Christ-like manner, to search out the orgasm she once had. Von Trier is graphic without being sensuous in a film that nimbly reveals the innards of any obsession, not just sex. The absence of the erotic in the film parallels her own loss of passion, which, if it doesn’t mean she stops seeing men, it at least spells the beginning of the end of pleasure in her obsession. Our pleasure is in von Trier’s humorous side actions, such a Seligman’s (StellanSkarsgard) analogy of sexual pain and the Western/Eastern Church gulf.
Her encounters continue to pile up, however, with two naked black men arguing in their erections resulting in a botched threesome, and a professional sadist (Jamie Bell), whose whippings are an extreme measure for an extreme addiction. When she becomes a debt collector, she is able to use what she’s learned about men for her own profit. When she takes up with her surrogate daughter, who is intended to be her successor, sex turns back on her to continue its uninterrupted reign in her life.
Her real challenge is dealing with her erudite confessor, Seligman, who carefully listens to her story and doles out sage-sounding commentary using mythology, mathematics, and fly-fishing. They are amusing interludes to her increasingly grim hunt for men. How she parts with him may also show how she will control the rest of her life, with or without sex.
John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts WCBE’s It’s Movie Time and co-hosts Cinema Classics. Contact him at JDeSando@Columbus.rr.com
