Nymphomaniac Vol. I- Review

Uhh...yeah. I remember seeing both volumes on someone's shelf and decided to see what all the fuss was about. It's quite a strange film really and I have a feeling that my personal opinion on this may not be a popular one, but just keep that in mind. This movie does things to me but we'll talk about that later. Also, I watched the chopped and edited version (as it was the only one available on Netflix) but apparently the original, uncut premiere of this movie went for 4-5 hours? This film was directed by Lars Von Trier and featured the talents of Charlotte Gainsbourg, Stacey Martin, Stellan Skarsgård, Shia Lebeouf and Christian Slater.

Basically, this film is not about love, so don't come into this thinking that it's going to be a romantic movie. As the title states. it's about having an addiction to sex. The film follows Joe, a self-diagnosed nymphomaniac who shares her story with a fisherman, Seligman, who had the kindness to take her into his home. Joe's story is a particularly sad one and invites Seligman's own interpretation of nymphomania to fly fishing. It is also categorised into chapters, which further relates to that of the fishing book Seligman speaks of.

The performances: Charlotte Gainsbourg plays the role of Joe (between the ages of 35-50), a nymphomaniac with a particularly cynical and negative outlook on herself as a person and her behaviour. Dry. That's really the only thing I can say about her performance. I get that she is supposed to be unimpressed, bored and negative but I didn't even feel like she delivered that. It felt like she was literally bored with her own role and didn't even try. Every time the scene went to her and not the flashbacks, I rolled my eyes because I was becoming so bored and not very attentive. I also understand that there would be no possible way for her to act flirtatious or even crack a seductive grin because it goes against the idea of this film. But definitely not a favourable or memorable role here.

Stellan Skarsgård was a better actor here. He played the role of Seligman, the fisherman that invites Joe into his home, after picking her up off the streets and opens his ears to her story. His performance here was actually quite swell. I liked how he characterised fly fishing with sex, it's weird no doubt, but it was a fun concept. Something I've never heard or thought about before. I also liked how he had some humour to break the ice and actually liven the movie up a little when Joe wasn't telling her story in flashbacks.

Stacey Martin plays Joe between the ages of 15-31. Okay, I found her to be boring. And that wasn't because of her role, like Charlotte. Just hearing Stacey's voice and the way she moves about on-screen bothers me. BUT, I'm already conflicted by this movie so let me say here: she seemed to have the best of both worlds with this role. The entire setting and connection with the appearance of characters is gloomy and seems to base itself around the time of the 60s through to the 80s (carriage scenes) so I can perfectly understand that this could have been a creative vision. She was definitely key in this movie though, as a younger version of Joe and the starting point of becoming aware of nymphomania and the human anatomy.

Well, I definitely saw way more of Shia LeBeouf than I ever wanted to but I must say, while I really don't care for his acting much, he was another key role here. He plays the role of Jerome, Joe's first sexual encounter and most importantly, one she remembers fondly. Unlike most characters in this movie, he has significance and non-verbally seems to pull it off. By this point, when he's seen later again, I had already lost interest so I was just sitting there unable to even judge his performance for better or worse.

Finally Christian Slater, who plays the role of Joe's dad. Christian Slater is always beautiful in the roles he takes on and while this role wasn't overly large, he still gave everything he could. If anything, I found solace in his character particularly when he speaks with young Joe about trees. He's barely important to this movie at all but I was still happy to see him there and he made me want to cry a little too.

Cons: Okay, time for my unpopular opinion, if you haven't already disagreed with anything I've said above. Let me make it clear that this is my opinion, but I'm still interested in hearing what you have to say, just don't jump on me for having thoughts of my own. These cons are going to be brutal but it's literally all I can say right now.

So, with Charlotte Gainsbourg, I already said that I found her performance to be dry but to be perfectly blunt, it was as dry as the skin on my knees. I just couldn't get into her character at all and it's not for a lack of understanding, she just literally did not interest me one bit.

Stacey Martin: Again, I understand that she is unenthusiastic about anything but if I wanted to see a zombie, I would have just watched a zombie film. There was nothing interesting about her.

Shia's English accent sucked, by the way. It sounded horrible and not authentic. Usually actors have trainers who help them with adapting to the accent their character is supposed to have, but it sounded like Shia had put this one on himself and failed. Miserably.

Did this movie make an impressionable start? Yes. They plays Rammstein so I jumped with excitement. Obviously that changed throughout but then it resumed at the ending so that was a good feature there. I do appreciate this movie as an art form and I liked the creative concept behind it, euphemisms and the general direction it was headed for, however, just the conveying of this didn't strike me. I do believe it was successful in disturbing the audience, not disturbing as in frightening but rather the thoughts of how nymphomania takes away the love factor behind lust and just how it left me feeling afterwards. It made sex sound like such a horrid thing, or rather, heavily overrated at times.

The ending was my favourite part though, the irony is just incredible but I also wasn't really expecting it either.

I'm going to check out vol. II at some stage, hopefully it will be better but in all honesty, I can't say this movie really did much for me at all. It's definitely creative, don't get me wrong but it just didn't have the same appeal to me like it did for others.

Score: 5.5/10