The funny thing is that Park Chan-wook, who is known for going to extremes as seen in his Vengeance trilogy, is not the one who went to the extreme this year. Dafoe is mainly trying to help Gainsbourg, who has the worst problems, but even she can't be fully cured anymore. But beyond that, all I'll say is that the story only involves Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg as a married couple who experience some incredible trauma and then head to their cabin in the woods for therapy. Lars von Trier bookends the story with a prologue and an epilogue, both beautifully conceived and shot exquisitely, and they're essential to getting the full picture. Part of the experience is watching it all play out, from the first frame to the last frame. I don't want to say anything about what happens in this. My gut feeling coming out of it is that I actually liked it, screwed up or not. In a good way? Or in a bad way? Even I don't know the answer to that question (or maybe that's something you'll decide for yourself), but I can tell you it's one hell of an exhilarating experience watching this. See that's the problem - Antichrist is fucked up. Maybe if there were more directors shepharding such fantastic female performances (not characters, but performances) to the screen, he would be easier to dismiss, but since there aren’t, he isn’t.Am I as screwed up as either of the characters in Antichrist if I say I had a blast watching this? Maybe it was the excitement in the air before it started, or maybe it was the combination of the laughs, shrieks, cheers, and jeers throughout Lars von Trier's latest film, but I think I enjoyed it. Gainsbourg always manages to bring a certain level of assuredness in her own acting that makes it easy to follow her into these dark, unappealing movies. But it looks like he was able to get another nuanced Charlotte Gainsbourg’s performance that will be hard to ignore. It should be easy to dismiss this film as a gross gimmick and plea for attention. Von Trier is an undesirable person, but an intriguing filmmaker. It’s a little reminiscent of how Shame portrayed sex addiction, though that film had a detached elegance to it that would be very out of place here.
The fact that it’s real sex is not only uncomfortably graphic, but also shows that it truly is meaningless - there is no lost love among the characters shown in the trailer. Melancholia was a nice break from the nauseating body horror, but that looks to be back in full force in Nymphomaniac. The sex portrayed in the trailer is not shot to arouse, but to repulse.
The first film in this trilogy, Antichrist, is a marriage of these themes, with the situational depression of a child’s death expressed with sexual mutilation and guilt.
After Melancholia‘s inevitability and inaction, maybe Nymphomaniac will be representing a reckless capacity for self-destruction. If Melanchoia was a heavy, deadening depressive episode, then so far, Nymphomaniac looks quite like mania - the screeching guitar, haphazard cuts, blunt force exposition, and eventual disintegration into screaming. Both are on full display in this minute and a half glimpse, which make this a very strong NSFW… maybe not safe for anywhere. The only thing really known about this film is it’s use of non-simulated (A.K.A. Now, the trailer to Nymphomaniac, the final film in von Trier’s “Depression” trilogy, has been released online. We haven’t heard much from Lars von Trier since 2010, when airing his odious personal views at the Cannes film festival robbed Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg of well-deserved accolades for their performances in von Trier’s Melancholia.
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