What Augustin Sees: Director's Journal Week 9

It all started with the poster of the film, which features the close up of the characters who are having orgasms. Instead of showing naked bodies or genitals, the director used the facial expressions to symbolize that this film is rebellious and provocative. This is the reason I watch this film, I was attracted by the poster. The film director uses the desire and curiosity of man on sex to attract people to watch the film. But after you have watched the film, it not what you have imagined, it’s more than that.

This is a work of pornography, in which fantasy, and the contemplation of it, is the only thing that’s real. David Denby, The New Yorker.

The best part of Lars von Trier's fascinating, engaging and often didactic "Nymphomaniac" is that, despite the sometimes-grim tone and bleak color palate, it's an extremely funny film, playful, even. It's outrageous and provocative, intellectual and primal at sometimes the same time. It features of a lot of what looks like actual sex (although we are told in the end credits that the penetrative sex depicted was done by body doubles), and while it is obviously interested in sex, it is more interested in how we talk about sex, how we incorporate it into our identity (or don't).

Roger Ebert, March 21, 2014

The film begins with black screen and the sound of rain hitting on metal. The director wants us to clear our minds before watching the movie and the sound of water drop on metal signifies the sound of sexual intercourse between man and woman. After that, the picture of an old alley pops up with water flowing on the wall which signifies the fluid coming out from woman genital. The rock and roll music starts after the close up of a hole, which signifies that the film is shocking and rebellious. Then an old bachelor, Seligman (Stellan Skarsgård), discovers badly beaten Joe in an alley and takes her into his home. He is a complete stranger and he asks what happened. As he tends to her wounds, Joe (Charlotte Gainsbourg), a self-diagnosed nymphomaniac, recounts the erotic story of her adolescence and young-adulthood. She warns him up front that it will not be a nice story, that she is a bad person. He assures her that nothing she tells him will shock him. He thinks she may be being too hard on herself. There's something almost unfinished about Joe, a flat affect, as she insists that her behavior has been beyond-the-pale. As the rain pours down, she tells him her story which she inspired from the things in the old man’s house. Everytime Joe tells her stories, Seligman comes out with theories which relate to the stories.

The film is broken up into titled-sections, each with their own narrative thru-line and tone.

In the flashback sections of Volume I, the young Joe is played by Stacy Martin, being raised by a "cold bitch" of a mother, and a kindly doctor father (Christian Slater) who passes on to his daughter a love of flora and fauna. She discovers early on that when she touches herself between her legs, she gets what she calls "the sensation". She has done “playing frogs” with her best friend, B and she rubs her vagina between rope. Joe views her virginity as something that needs to be gotten rid of pronto, so she hits up a local rough-around-the-edges mechanic named Jerome (Shia LaBeouf) to do the deed; he penetrate her 3 times and 5 times from the back. After that, there are long conversations about Edgar Allan Poe, Bach, and Fibonacci numbers.

Young Joe, once she lost her virginity, starts her quest to have as much sex as she possibly can. Her partner-in-crime for this is B who is even more daring, and who comes up with various sexual competitions. They board a train and competes how many men they have sex with and the winner get chocolate. Joe is amazed to discover how easy it is. She tells Seligman of her learning curve, the tactics and strategies she used as she worked that train. "Every man is different. She is cold and calculating about it, and the scene really captures the restlessness and kamikaze bravery of young girls first trying out their sexual powers without knowing at all what they are doing.", Roger Ebert. Seligman is not freaked out by what Joe tells him. On the contrary, he is delighted by it, and seems delighted by the opportunity to talk about all of these important matters in an in-depth spit-balling kind of way. Seligman is a big fly-fisher, and much of what Joe describes, her various tactics with men, her use of different kinds of "lures", reminds him of his favorite hobby. "Nymphomaniac" does not judge Young Joe and her friend. The only person judging Young Joe is the mature Joe, wrapped up in blankets, telling Seligman the story.

Chapter 2 is about Jerome, he keeps entering the film, through various hard-to-believe coincidences. The mechanic somehow is transformed into a pencil-pushing office manager. Joe found herself crush for Jerome, but when she is ready to confess about it, Jerome vanishes.

B: “The secret ingredient to sex is love”.

Unbelievable Uma Thurman

Chapter 3 is about Mrs. H. In one sequence, Joe relates the difficulties of juggling seven different lovers. Often the lovers meet at her door, one guy leaving as the other guy arrives. Things get messy. Joe may be able to separate sex from emotion (as a matter of fact, that is her goal), but it is not as easy for others. One guy shows up at her door, holding a couple of suits in dry-cleaning bags, announcing he has finally left his wife and is moving in. Joe is horrified, even more so when the scorned wife, known only as Mrs. H. (Uma Thurman) shows up at the door with her three children. She wants the boys to see where Daddy has been spending all his time. "Come, boys, let's go look at the whoring bed!" exclaims Mrs. H. brightly.

The next chapter is Delirium, talks about the disease Joe’s father has. His father suffered before he died and Joe uses sex to escape from the most painful moment in her life. When she saw her fathers' corpse, she is lubricated and she is shameful about that. But Seligman consoles her that it's normal to reach sexually during crisis. This chapter is in black and white which signifies the moment she don't want to remember.

The little organ school is the last chapter in Volume One. She talks about three lovers relating to the three voices used in Polyphony (it's distinguished by the idea that every voice is it's own melody, but together in harmony).

F is the bass voice, the monotone, predictable and he knows what Joe wants in sex. Joe's orgasm is the F's goal and he gives Joe the privilege that no one has and he is the foundation to the Cantus Firmus.

G is like some kind of Jaguar or Leopard, he doesn't enter the door immediately but he does, he could take the whole world. He is the one she had to and wanted to wait for and he is in charge in the sex. He is the second voice.

The third voice is the secret ingredient, Jerome, who appear in the park and hook up with Joe. With Jerome, Joe's hole is filled and she is satisfied and happy abut it, she has found her love. At the same time, she lost her orgasm.

“Sex can be many things, it can express love, hate, power, revenge. It can relieve boredom. It can be overlaid with intellectual considerations, or concerned with concepts such as consent, objectification, misogyny, the entire history of cultural baggage people bring into bed with them. "Nymphomaniac: Vol. I" addresses these heavy topics, but in a way that doesn't feel heavy at all. The film is an intellectual high-wire act, death-defying, dangerous, entertaining, and delighting in its own inventiveness and daring.”, Roger Ebert.