The middle-aged woman Joe continues to confess her life story to bachelor Seligman in his apartment: while she was married to Jerome, and they had a son, she suddenly lost her ability to achieve sexual pleasure. Jerome passively allowed her to see other men. Joe tried everything: she randomly talked to an interpreter to ask an African migrant to have sex with her, but later, in the hotel room, the African migrant brought his friend with him to have a threesome, after which Joe left. Joe accepted to see sadist K, who slapped and whipped her butt. When her son almost fell off from the window, Jerome files for divorce and brings the kid for adoption. Joe became pregnant and performed an abortion herself at home. She attended a sex-addict therapy, but eventually blasted them for rejecting their passion. Joe was hired by L to be a debt collector, assissted by two bodyguards. She recruited a teenage girl, P, to be her apprentice. P wanted to have a lesbian relationship with Joe, but Joe refused. P then had an affair with Jerome. Joe wanted to shoot Jerome, but her gun failed to fire. Seligman admits he never had sex. When Joe goes to sleep in bed, Seligman touches her butt and wants to sleep with her, upon which Joe shoots him.
If you can't keep the viewers' attention through inspiration, shock. That seems to be the motto of Lars von Trier's second part of "Nymphomaniac", which forms the final part of his 'depression trilogy', yet judging by the finished result, it is more suitable to be called von Trier's 'creative crisis trilogy'. The film is an aimless mess of episode after episode, without reaching a specific goal, lingering for some reason on several gruesome details which feel like empty provocation. Its biggest problem: it's not even sexy. Von Trier directs the scarce erotic sequences as if an alien would try to recreate human sexuality. In one example, at the sex-addict therapy, one woman tells about her sexual encounter with other men: she invited them, and then lied down naked with her back on a hill of coal. She then used the dirt from coal to besmirch the black soot over her breasts and stomach. You would rather want to give her soap than to think to touch her in that filth. In another, Joe arranges for a sexual encounter with an African migrant in the hotel room. But for some reason, the migrant arrives with his friend and they want a threesome, even though they don't speak her language. Would a migrant really risk ruining his chance at sex like that? For all he knows, the woman could be terrified and run away when a third, uninvited person appeared. At best, he would first have sex with her, and then subtly ask her if she would like a threesome next time. In this edition, this sequence feels fake and unconvincing. The worst moment is the infamous self-abortion procedure by Joe at her home, in which she inserts three tubes deep inside her vagina, equipped even with an X-ray image of a sharp tube penetrating the uterus to pierce a fetus, which is so disgusting and intolerable it makes you want to throw up. Does von Trier want to make a movie about sexuality or to traumatize viewers? He himself seems to be confused as to what he wants to say here, and thus this misguided tone contaminated the entire film. Far below the best movies about sexuality with taste, such as Nishima's "In the Realm of the Senses", Virgo's "Lie With Me" or Medem's "Sex and Lucia", which look at this ill-conceived movie with pity.
Grade:+
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