Lars von Trier
Nymphomaniac (Vol. I & II)

Sex is the most overrated aspect of human existence, at least for us Westerners. The taboos it encompasses, the traumas it is seasoned with since childhood (let's invoke Herr Freud) are the image of our fragility. And by "our" I mean our traditional culture, the most patriarchal one, with reassuring roles, the old-school family, the girl who stays in her place and almost suffers sexual desire, yielding to the act as if breathing toxic air: an inevitable evil.

Lars Von Trier tackles the subject of sex to plant his customary animalistic nihilism in fertile ground, and he propels his vision of man-animal (or machine if you prefer), who acts under the aegis of uncontrollable urges that effectively nullify any morality, rendering it sterile hypocrisy. The protagonist of Nymphomaniac is obsessed with sex in all its forms and explores every nook and cranny of it: from the playful kind in adolescence to the mature and passive one, to the substitution of the penis with a gun, with which she manages to formulate in a meaningful sense the equation virility equals violence.

The characters in the film move along the threads of a web, but these are steel threads, indestructible and sharp: the chemical desire that possesses like a demon, the woman-hunter who catches men like a fisherman catches trout in a pond (what hope do these fragile creatures have, completely dominated by sexual instinct?) and becomes a dominatrix, cynical and bestial, completely stripped of her reproductive function, of womb-cradle of life, Stella Maris, becomes Artemis-Diana in terms of sterility but not in the act of absorbing as many male members as possible.

However, the film is exceedingly long (they are actually two films) and this series of tableaux of passionate slavery, presented with the stale trick of a retrospective narrative, often descend into outright pornography. It is no longer the nudity or the explicit evidence of the act that is pornographic, but rather the vulgar will to reiterate a concept to the point of exhaustion that insults the intelligence of the observer who does not allow themselves to be seduced by the free pheromones, the rawness of the scenes, the already seen, by this female Don Giovanni figure which, however, is parodic, stripped as it is of the feverish (and otherworldly) spirit of conquest because if it were the case, Von Trier would have to admit the existence of a spiritual side to sexuality that he stubbornly denies: for him, there is no Dionysian aspect but only the belly or, rather, the offal. In Von Trier's cold boreal night, there is no room for feelings unless used as strings by an unconscious puppeteer, and least of all is there room for love, which is reduced to the role of metaphor, stripped of any redemptive or salvific power, enslaved and humiliated or at least downgraded to the status of a now-dead myth or deity.

From a narrative point of view, the characters do not display significant changes in conduct or conviction, they remain opaque objects illuminated by a bleak photography, impenetrable to the viewer's gaze to whom only the free will to witness this simulation of enslaved existences is left, the first being that of Joe, the protagonist, who bleeds, stitches herself up, heals from bruises, and returns to her usual self in a perpetual motion fueled by a dark energy source. And it's a pity because if the film had lasted much less, with the cast at hand (among many: Charlotte Gainsbourg, Christian Slater, Uma Thurman, Hugo Speer, Willem Dafoe) and a different script, it could have been, if not enjoyable, at least appreciable.

Von Trier instead cares little about communicating, in fact, he does everything to stir the morbid interest of the press, insiders, the public: he wants attention, desires to be detested (or, which is the same, loved only by those who share his same view of existence) and that is why he will not get the least bit of it in this my negligible review. Just that you have been warned, if you really want to watch Nymphomaniac, do so in small homeopathic doses, and right after, have fun, immerse yourself in life, get drunk, dance. Because when time is up, everyone dies and it's never too late to enjoy oneself and to also find a meaning to one's life that goes beyond Von Trier's thermodynamic mechanism. But obviously, Von Trier is Von Trier and I am Mrs. Nobody.