Gloria Grahame won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for 1952's THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL and while she was a big star from the late 1940s through the 1950s, she's been largely forgotten aside from well-schooled movie buffs and regular viewers of Turner Classic Movies. She lived a life ready-made for the tabloids, her most notable scandal being that her fourth husband Tony Ray was the son of her second husband, REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE director Nicholas Ray. As the story goes, Nicholas Ray caught Grahame in bed with his 13-year-old son (from his first marriage) and promptly filed for divorce. Grahame's marriage to the younger Ray several years later in 1960 effectively got her blackballed from Hollywood, appearing in just one film that entire decade, a supporting role in the 1966 Chuck Connors western RIDE BEYOND VENGEANCE. She resurfaced in the early 1970s, paying the bills mostly in drive-in exploitation fare like 1971's BLOOD AND LACE, 1974's MAMA'S DIRTY GIRLS, 1976's MANSION OF THE DOOMED, and her final film, 1981's THE NESTING. Grahame and Tony Ray divorced in 1974 and Grahame split her time between Hollywood, NYC, and the UK, where she stayed busy doing theater work in her final years when she was terminally ill with cancer and refused to even acknowledge her condition until it was far too late. She died in 1981 at just 57.
Based on Peter Turner's 1986 memoir detailing his relationship with Grahame, FILM STARS DON'T DIE IN LIVERPOOL concentrates on the actress' final years from 1979 to 1981, and doesn't really address the more tawdry elements of her life and never even mentions the declining quality of her film work (though she did manage to land small roles in a few reputable films like 1980's MELVIN AND HOWARD). In 1981, Gloria (Annette Bening) is doing a play at a small theater in Liverpool and collapses in her dressing room just before going on stage. She calls Peter (Jamie Bell) and asks to stay with him at home of his parents Bella (Julie Walters) and Joe (Kenneth Cranham). FILM STARS then cuts back and forth between the present in 1981 and 1979, when Gloria and Peter, nearly 30 years her junior, meet and begin a torrid romance. Director Paul McGuigan (LUCKY NUMBER SLEVIN) and screenwriter Matt Greenhalgh (CONTROL, NOWHERE BOY) generally hit all the biopic bullet points and standard-issue melodrama of a kind-hearted but sometimes mercurial, past-her-prime star and a younger man falling head over heels. FILM STARS gets its biggest benefit from a wonderful performance by Bening, who displays only a passing physical resemblance to Grahame but really captures her spirit, demeanor, and especially her voice. The filmmakers allow her to bring some complexity to a sincere but troubled person--she genuinely loves Peter and doesn't treat him as some kind of boy-toy, she generally doesn't behave like a diva and is at the point where she prefers a quieter, simpler life--and we also get to spend some time with Peter's family, who welcome Gloria into their lives with open arms. The film glosses over some details, though a dinner scene with Gloria's mother (Vanessa Redgrave) and her bitter sister (Frances Barber) serves to inform Peter about Tony Ray without going into too many lurid specifics (when Grahame leaves the room, her mother implores Peter, "Don't marry Gloria"). Gloria's and Peter's arguments grow a bit repetitive and tiresome in the second half, but the always-great Bening is just superb throughout, and she was getting a push for awards season recognition before Sony pretty much gave up on the film, stalling its release on just 107 screens at its widest. (R, 106 mins)
BACKSTABBING FOR BEGINNERS (Denmark/Canada - 2018)
A24 replicates its bizarre LAST MOVIE STAR release strategy with BACKSTABBING FOR BEGINNERS, which premiered on DirecTV a month before its Blu-ray/DVD release, followed by a limited theatrical rollout the Friday after. There's really no viable distribution option for this unbearably dull political thriller, which isn't helped at all by a title that sounds like a YA teen comedy or the kind of movie whose poster has the tag line "The con is on." It's based on the 2010 memoir of the same title by Michael Soussan, a UN diplomat and whistleblower who exposed rampant, systemic corruption in the UN's Oil for Food Program in 2003. When economic sanctions against Iraq led to the country's economy crashing and its people starving and dying under Saddam Hussein, the Oil for Food Program was developed to sell Iraqi oil vouchers in exchange for humanitarian aid. The scandal more or less got lost in the shuffle with the mainstream media amidst the extensive reporting on the Iraqi invasion in 2003, but as a film, the utterly lifeless BACKSTABBING FOR BEGINNERS never even comes close to catching fire. Nothing works in its favor, especially the robotic, monotone Theo James (the DIVERGENT series) as Soussan surrogate "Michael Sullivan," here upgraded to the assistant to UN Under-Secretary-General Benon "Pasha" Sevan (Ben Kingsley). Pasha's palm-greasing, money-grubbing, and assorted wheelings-and-dealings are referenced and talked about but never really demonstrably shown. He spends a lot of time lecturing the idealistic "Sullivan" with sage advice like "We never lie, but we choose our facts or truths with utmost care," and "Information is currency...it's power!"
Everyone in BACKSTABBING FOR BEGINNERS talks like this, whether it's one Baghdad-based UN office drone telling Sullivan "We're just pawns in a bigger game, you and me," or the UN's Baghdad field chief Christine Dupre (Jacqueline Bisset) yelling "Everyone is grifting! Corruption grows like a cancer!" There's a lot of talk about Sullivan's predecessor in his job being killed in a hit and run that probably wasn't an accident, and a time-consuming subplot about Pasha trying to throw a Kurdish interpreter and Sullivan love interest (Belcim Bilgin) under the bus with trumped-up espionage charges, but BACKSTABBING FOR BEGINNERS is an oppressively boring "thriller" that might've been something worthwhile in the hands of, say, Costa-Gavras. But under the watch of director/co-writer Per Fly, it's terribly written and acted, even by a profane Kingsley, who hams mercilessly and sports an accent that has him almost constantly shouting "Fack!" This is the kind of movie that opens with a shot of the NYC skyline, the Empire State Building in plain view, accompanied by the caption "New York." This is the kind of movie that spells "Morocco" two different ways on the same closing credits page. How bad is BACKSTABBING FOR BEGINNERS? It's so bad that it actually ends with Sullivan reflecting on the scandal and telling a reporter "The truth isn't about the lies we told each other...it's about the lies we tell ourselves." Get the fuck outta here with that shitty writing. (R, 108 mins)
Come on, BACKSTABBING FOR BEGINNERS!
DEEP BLUE SEA 2 (US - 2018)
After 19 years, was anyone demanding a sequel to Renny Harlin's shark movie DEEP BLUE SEA? The original film, a moderate hit that's become a cable favorite to this day, has one of the all-time great shocks I've ever experienced in a crowded movie theater (if you've seen it, you know the scene) as well as one of the dumbest closing credits songs you'll ever hear, but the primitive CGI looked bad then and is utterly laughable now. It should come as no surprise that the CGI looks pretty much the same in this low-budget, DTV sequel that, for a while, throws some pretty crazy shit at the wall to see what sticks but eventually settles into being a by-the-numbers, de facto remake of its predecessor. The only reason this even exists is that it's a recognizable name that can belatedly hitch a ride on the SHARKNADO/ SHALLOWS/ 47 METERS DOWN bandwagon. Billionaire pharmaceutical CEO and standard-issue megalomaniac Carl Durant (Michael Beach as Samuel L. Jackson) is bankrolling an illegal, off-the-books research project at an underwater research facility off the coast of South Africa. He's pumped five aggressive bull sharks full of an experimental serum that's altered their genetic structure in an attempt to get to the core of creating a hyper-intelligence that he hopes to use on humans. He and his security chief Trent Slater (JOHN DIES AT THE END's Rob Mayes as Thomas Jane) can control the sharks via key fob, but a crew of scientists recruited by Durant, led by world-renowned marine conservationist Dr. Misty Calhoun (Danielle Savre as Saffron Burrows), are appalled at the lack of ethics. Of course, the sharks start to develop intelligence beyond anyone's control--first digging a tunnel under the electric fence at the perimeter of the base--and the main female shark (named "Ella") ends up having babies, which are born addicted to Durant's super-intelligent wonder drug that--wait for it--also increases their aggression and has them attacking as quickly and ferociously as small piranha. To make matters worse, Durant's gotten himself hooked on the drug himself and grows increasingly paranoid and as the situation gets worse, he has no problem sacrificing everyone else if it means preserving his research.
That's the set-up, and while it's no great shakes, it's surprisingly not terrible even if the actors are notch below what the 1999 film could corral (Savre has more than established her DTV bona fides after BRING IT ON: ALL OR NOTHING, BOOGEYMAN 2, and JARHEAD 2: FIELDS OF FIRE). It really makes no sense why this drug has to be tested on sharks, unless it's only because Durant had nothing else to do with a massive underwater research installation he owned as was just letting go to waste. But once Ella has her babies and the underwater facility starts flooding, it's strictly business as usual as the mostly non-descript cast is devoured one by one and the script seems to completely forget about Durant getting all fucked up on his superdrug. Director Darin Scott has been around for decades--he co-wrote 1987's THE OFFSPRING and 1995's TALES FROM THE HOOD, and in the '90s, produced Charles Burnett's TO SLEEP WITH ANGER, the rap comedy FEAR OF A BLACK HAT, and the great MENACE II SOCIETY (man...DEEP BLUE SEA 2, dude? I guess a job's a job)--and brings some bizarre items to table in the early going, like opening credits that look like they belong in a 007 movie. But there is one moment in DEEP BLUE SEA 2 that's so inspired, so hilarious, so brilliantly, off-the-charts ridiculous that it makes the whole thing impossible to simply dismiss: Durant is yelling at his flunky attorney, who's concerned about the legality of that they're doing and what will become of the sharks after the research is complete. Durant says he just needs the sharks until he gets the information he needs and then he'll simply kill them off. "Not so fast," thinks the super-smart Ella, lingering outside the porthole in Durant's quarters, glaring at him and reading his lips. OK, fine, DEEP BLUE SEA 2. You win. (R, 94 mins)
Directed by Bong Joon Ho. Written by Bong Joon Ho and Kelly Masterson. Cast: Chris Evans, Song Kang Ho, Tilda Swinton, Ed Harris, John Hurt, Jamie Bell, Octavia Spencer, Ewen Bremner, Ko Asung, Alison Pill, Luke Pasqualino, Vlad Ivanov, Adnon Haskovic, Emma Levie, Clark Middleton, Tomas Lemarquis, Paul Lazar, Steve Park, Marcanthonee Jon Reis, Karel Vasely. (R, 126 mins)
The instant cult classic of the summer, the $40 million SNOWPIERCER was released in its native South Korea and the rest of Asia a year ago, where it became a blockbuster hit. It opened in Europe not long after, but its US release hit a roadblock. The Weinstein Company acquired the US distribution rights, but expressed concern over its commercial viability if it was to get a wide release. Harvey Weinstein wanted changes made, demanding the 126-minute running time be cut down to 100 minutes with voiceover exposition added at the beginning and end--in short, the same demands he made on Wong Kar Wai's THE GRANDMASTER. SNOWPIERCER director Bong Joon Ho (MEMORIES OF MURDER, THE HOST), making his (for the most part) English-language debut, refused to comply. Weinstein made the changes anyway and focus-grouped both cuts of the film to test audiences. When Bong's version got a better response, Weinstein agreed to release the director's cut, but demoted the film to Radius/TWC, the company's B-movie/genre outfit, presumably for VOD and a brief theatrical run. Word of the film's purported burial spread online and that, coupled with overwhelmingly positive critical reviews, the fact that it was a huge hit overseas, and a knockout US trailer, led to a groundswell of interest from North American audiences who wanted to see the film. It opened on eight screens two weeks ago, expanding to 250 last week, and now it's on VOD in what the Weinstein Company is spinning as a "bold new distribution platform," or some such industry jargon. Maybe it was planned all along, the same way Paramount released PARANORMAL ACTIVITY only because we "demanded" it, or maybe Weinstein's just being a bullying dick, but regardless, SNOWPIERCER is finally being made accessible stateside.
First off, let's not kid ourselves: there's no way this was going to play as a wide-release summer blockbuster, even if Bong relented and cut 26 minutes out of it. Length is not the issue in terms of commercial viability, especially when TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION runs nearly three hours. No, SNOWPIERCER is just a strange film. It exists in that place that precious few films can thrive, especially in today's cinematic culture: the tiny space between the multiplex and the arthouse. There's enough action to please the blockbuster crowd, and SNOWPIERCER has its own singularly unique vision and imagination. But it hammers its points so hard that its overtly aggressive lack of subtlety almost becomes comical at times. Of course, it's intentionally heavy-handed in its mission and its points are valid, but this kind of metaphorical narrative can spill over into self-parody if it's not handled the right way. Bong never loses control of the story, but it goes in directions that will fly just fine in the art house but probably elicit eye-rolling and dismissive snickers in a packed multiplex. That's not a judgment on the intelligence of a movie audience--indeed, SNOWPIERCER, while enormously entertaining and a film I'll revisit frequently, isn't quite as smart or deep as it thinks it is--it's just an observation on a distributor understanding moviegoer expectations and knowing its target audience. Releasing this nationwide on 3000 screens would've resulted in a box-office flop. By letting word-of-mouth spread, SNOWPIERCER has the potential to gain momentum and become something we don't see much of anymore: a genuine sleeper hit.
In the year 2014, the governments of the world worked together to disperse a cooling agent called CW-7 into Earth's atmosphere as a way to combat escalating temperatures caused by global warming. It worked a little too well, freezing the planet and rendering humanity extinct. The relatively few survivors are corralled onto The Rattling Ark, an impossibly-long supertrain on an equally impossible track that circles the entire planet over the course of a year. Cut to 2031, and the Rattling Ark is a high-speed symbol of the world's economic and social structure: it churns in perpetuity, with its own ecosystem and food sources, gathering water from the snow it filters from the exterior of the train, and seemingly self-propelled so long as everyone and everything are in their right place. Order must be kept. The privileged live in comfort toward the front of the train, the underclass "freeloaders" are herded in the rear in horrific living conditions The front dine on sushi, they frequent salons, and their children attend school, the rear subsist on gelatinous "protein bars" made of ground-up insects and vermin and are routinely beaten and subjugated by ruthless, militarized security officials. The denizens of the tail, led by Curtis (Chris Evans), Edgar (Jamie Bell), and the wise Gilliam (John Hurt) are plotting a takeover of the train to make it to the front and gain control of "The Sacred Engine." Mason (Tilda Swinton) is the representative of the Rattling Ark's engineer, the revered Wilford the Benevolent (Ed Harris), the limitlessly wealthy magnate who designed the train and the global track and, as she often reminds those in the tail, was kind enough to allow them to live. Mason and her goonish guards try to quash the uprising but it backfires, and Curtis and company take Mason hostage and start moving up car by car with the help of Namgoong (Bong regular Song Kang Ho), who's been held in the prisoner car with his daughter Yona (Ko Asung, who also played Song's daughter in THE HOST). Both are addicted to a drug called Kronole, which Curtis uses to bribe Nangoong into aiding their cause. Nangoong helped design the lock system on the train and knows how to get through each doors leading to each car, but has his own idea about what to do when they finally get to the front.
Essentially a REVOLT ON THE DYSTOPIAN EXPRESS or THE SACRED ENGINE THAT COULD, if you will, SNOWPIERCER is pretty blunt in its politics: the one-percenters rule the world and will do what they have to do maintain order and keep everyone in their place (it's certainly no accident that there's no middle-class on the Rattling Ark). It's not subtle in its messaging, which is rather obvious and ham-fisted to the point that your enjoyment of the film is probably predicated on where you stand on the political spectrum. Needless to say, this is probably not a film that's going to play well with the Fox News crowd (SPOILER ALERT: Swinton's Mason is not the hero). SNOWPIERCER's strengths lie the sheer audacity of its story and its presentation, incorporating elements of class struggle, post-apocalyptic nightmare, and dark humor bordering on absurdism. It's equal parts Terry Gilliam (as in Hurt's character's surname), Jean-Pierre Jeunet & Marc Caro, Stanley Kubrick, Fritz Lang's METROPOLIS, Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett, and Luis Bunuel. It may not be the best film of the summer, but you won't find one that's more ambitious, visionary, and just plain odd.
Based on the 1982 French graphic novel Le Transperceneige, SNOWPIERCER was scripted by Bong and Kelly Masterson (BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU'RE DEAD). The cast is excellent across the board, headed by a never-better Evans, who gets solid support from Hurt, Bell, Song, Ko, and Octavia Spencer as a mother whose son is taken to the front of the train for undisclosed reasons after Wilford the Benevolent's sinister attack dog Claude (Emma Levie) sizes him up with a measuring tape and has him taken away. As good as everyone is, they all take a backseat to an absolutely brilliant performance by Swinton, who's unforgettable as the ruthless Mason. Looking like a political cartoonist's mean-spirited caricature of Margaret Thatcher with a vocal impression to match and a case of the crazy eyes to rival Eva Green in 300: RISE OF AN EMPIRE, Swinton owns SNOWPIERCER whenever she's onscreen (though honorable mention must go to Alison Pill as a deranged teacher indoctrinating the children with the philosophy of Wilford). Whether she's coldly reciting the rules of the train ("Everyone in their place!") or gleefully awaiting the outcome of a clash between the rear dwellers and her officers ("Precisely 74% of you shall die...this is going to be good!") or hospitably offering sushi after she's been taken prisoner, Swinton delivers a master class in scene stealing, and in a just world, both she and Mason's dentures would be duking it out for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar.
FILTH (Germany/US/UK/Sweden/Belgium - 2013; US release 2014) Written and directed by Jon S. Baird. Cast: James McAvoy, Jamie Bell, Eddie Marsan, Imogen Poots, Jim Broadbent, Joanne Froggatt, Shauna Macdonald, Shirley Henderson, John Sessions, Gary Lewis, Brian McCardie, Emun Elliott, Martin Compston, Kate Dickie, Iain De Caestecker, Joy McAvoy, Pollyanna McIntosh, Bobby Rainsbury. (R, 98 mins)
This grotesque adaptation of Irvine Welsh's 1998 novel suffers from the same problem that plagued the last movie based on a Welsh work, the little-seen Canadian film ECSTASY (2012). While FILTH doesn't have Canadian actors attempting to tackle Scottish accents and losing spectacularly, it does share with ECSTASY a sense that it's been kept in storage for 15 years and is only now being released. It seems inevitable that every film version of Welsh's work will look and feel like Danny Boyle's landmark TRAINSPOTTING (1996), but in the hands of a director with vision like, say, a David Cronenberg or a Terry Gilliam, FILTH's parade of filth could've had some unique gonzo artistry that would've made its own mark outside of the dated world of TRAINSPOTTING knockoffs. Instead, it's the work of writer/director Jon S. Baird, who has one other feature under his belt (the obscure 2008 crime drama CASS), with his only other credit of note being an associate producer on the 2005 cult film GREEN STREET HOOLIGANS. Baird is obviously a fan of Boyle and probably saw FILTH as a way to pay homage to both him and Welsh, but it's all so familiar and formulaic at this point. Baird's FILTH only makes fleeting mention of a key element of Welsh's novel: the tapeworm that's inside the protagonist's body and, as it grows and spawns, it starts narrating its own chapters. The elimination of that "character"--something with which a hypothetical Cronenberg or Gilliam would've had a blast--leaves Baird with little to do other than fashion FILTH as BAD LIEUTENANT with a Scottish burr.
Det. Sgt. Bruce Robertson (James McAvoy), is an Edinburgh cop obsessed with discrediting the colleagues in line for the promotion he wants for himself. Robertson is a sociopath, a misanthrope, an alcoholic, a junkie, a thief, and a sex addict. He's corrupt and amoral, and his sickness has spread to his impressionable young partner Lennox (Jamie Bell), as the two routinely go on coke-and-hooker binges. While Lennox is questioning an 18-year-old man for engaging in unlawful sexual conduct with his under-the-age-of-consent 15-year-old girlfriend, Robertson is in the next room getting a blowjob from said underage girl in exchange for not telling her dad what she's been doing. Robertson is supposed to be investigating the murder of a Japanese tourist with Lennox and the ambitious Dunning (Imogen Poots), but they end up doing the leg work as Robertson instead spreads rumors about other cops, steals balloons from little kids, engages in mutual erotic asphyxiation with the wife (Kate Dickie) of an irate cop (Brian McCardie), makes obscene phone calls to the wife (Shirley Henderson) of his nebbishy, dweeby lodge brother Bladesey (Eddie Marsan), from whom he steals money to buy drugs, and then drags away on an ostensible bicycling trip to Hamburg, where he visits brothels on his own after slipping Bladesey some roofies, leaving him stranded at a gay bar, and forcing him to squint his way through the rest of the trip after stealing his incredibly thick-lensed eyeglasses, and throwing them in a river between periodic hallucinations with a mocking shrink (Jim Broadbent). Robertson is a bad guy---he's also bipolar and off his meds--and in his more introspective moments, pines for the wife (Shauna Macdonald) who left him, but some semblance of good exists deep within him when he tries to save a dying man on a busy street while everyone else stands around helplessly. The man's widow (Joanne Froggatt) sees he's a troubled soul but instead of letting her in, resorts to his maniacally excessive ways.
There's no denying McAvoy throws himself into the role much like Harvey Keitel and Nicolas Cage did in each of their interpretations of BAD LIEUTENANT. But FILTH the movie is a dumbed-down version of Filth the book and plays like stale retread of BAD LIEUTENANT filtered through TRAINSPOTTING. It doesn't even keep Welsh's very INVESTIGATION OF A CITIZEN ABOVE SUSPICION-esque ending. It's shot in very much the same style, and you can almost see Ewan McGregor as Robertson if this was made a decade and a half ago. Many of Welsh's novels take place in the same universe with recurring characters popping up throughout (for example: Begbie, played by Robert Carlyle in TRAINSPOTTING, is mentioned several times throughout Filth), and on the page, it's part of an ever-expanding, self-referential universe. On the screen, it just comes across as repetitive and uninspired. Welsh is one of the film's 34 (!) credited producers and obviously signed off on it (which, much like most authors selling book rights, probably involved getting paid and then had nothing else to do with it), but the alterations made to the story are to its detriment. Yes, film is a different medium, but Baird just seems interested in the most transgressive elements of Welsh's story with little concern for other things that were going on. An ambitious adaptation of Filth would've explored more than Robertson's over-the-top histrionics. I'm probably making FILTH sound like a bad movie. It's an OK film, moderately entertaining and never dull (and there is one admittedly brilliant use of David Soul's "Silver Lady"), but it never really tries, either. If shock value is all Baird was after, why didn't he just remake BAD LIEUTENANT? Why bother adapting Welsh's book if you're just going to toss its most unique elements?
NYMPHOMANIAC (Denmark/Germany/France/Belgium - 2013; US release 2014) Written and directed by Lars von Trier.
VOL I: Cast: Charlotte Gainsbourg, Stellan Skarsgard, Stacy Martin, Shia LaBeouf, Christian Slater, Uma Thurman, Sophie Kennedy Clark, Connie Nielsen, Jens Albinus, Hugo Speer, Cyron Melville, Felicity Gilbert, Anders Hove, Jesper Christensen, Saskia Reeves, Ananya Berg, Nicolas Bro. (Unrated, 117 mins)
VOL II: Cast: Charlotte Gainsbourg, Stellan Skarsgard, Stacy Martin, Shia LaBeouf, Christian Slater, Jamie Bell, Willem Dafoe, Mia Goth, Jean-Marc Barr, Udo Kier, Michael Pas, Caroline Goodall, Kate Ashfield, Ananya Berg, Shanti Roney, Kookie Ryan, Papou. (Unrated, 124 mins)
Arthouse provocateur Lars von Trier prides himself on walking the fine line between visionary auteur and misanthropic asshole, a firm believer that any publicity is good publicity, whether he's putting his lead actresses through hell to get the performance he needs from them, or prompting John C. Reilly to walk off of 2005's MANDERLAY over filming the actual slaughter of a donkey, or getting kicked out of the Cannes Film Festival for saying he sympathizes with Hitler. Like a bratty kid, von Trier revels in attention but with rare exception, backs it up with great films. When he announced NYMPHOMANIAC would run over five hours and include professional actors in unsimulated, hardcore sex scenes, the buzz was on. While the director's complete five-and-a-half hour cut was released in Europe, the US release was split into two films running around two hours each, released a few weeks apart (the director's cut will likely surface on Blu-ray). Von Trier supervised the US cuts, and while much explicit material was removed, quite a bit remains, including some penetrative shots that involve body doubles and CGI trickery melding the below-the-belt region with the name actors' bodies from the waist up. In other words, Shia LaBeouf may have auditioned for the film by sending von Trier a homemade sex tape, and while he's doing frontal nudity, the erection and beyond are the work of his body double. The same goes for actress Stacy Martin fellating a man (Jens Albinus) on a train. It's a very real-looking prosthetic penis, and while we see semen drooling out of Martin's mouth, the director's cut apparently shows the spurting ejaculation, for those so inclined.
A lot of this is von Trier just being von Trier, but contrary to initial reports and the director's own incessant hype, NYMPHOMANIAC, at least in its US incarnation, isn't quite the wall-to-wall porno fuckfest that it's been made out to be. In many ways, it's a von Trier greatest hits package, with cues from and callbacks to his past films like DOGVILLE (2003), ANTICHRIST (2009) and especially BREAKING THE WAVES (1996). It's von Trier's third straight film with Charlotte Gainsbourg, who's become his muse in misery after the harrowing ANTICHRIST and MELANCHOLIA (2011), where she initially has a supporting role but becomes the focus as the film progresses. Von Trier has a history of pushing his actresses to their limit and getting incredible work from them: Emily Watson's Oscar-nominated performance in BREAKING THE WAVES remains one of the greatest in all of cinema, while Bjork surpassed all expectations in DANCER IN THE DARK (2000). DOGVILLE's Nicole Kidman and MANDERLAY's Bryce Dallas Howard also survived von Trier and lived to tell the tale. In Gainsbourg, von Trier has found a kindred spirit who's willing and eager to go to the dark places others won't. She's the Klaus Kinski to his Werner Herzog, minus the mutual death threats.
As the first half of NYMPHOMANIAC opens, bookish academic Seligman (Stellan Skarsgard) happens upon the unconscious Joe (Gainsbourg) lying in an alley, beaten and bloodied. He helps her back to his apartment, lets her shower and makes her some tea. They begin talking, first about little things, and then she agrees to tell her story. Von Trier plays with the time element a bit, but in the first volume, much of the dramatic weight is carried by 22-year-old newcomer Martin as young Joe. As older Joe explains, "I discovered my cunt as a two-year-old," and before her age is in double digits (Ananya Berg plays Joe at this age in some discreetly-shot sequences that imply more they show), Joe and her best friend B are exploring themselves in ways that are already threatening to go beyond sliding down the bannister and grinding themselves against the bathroom floor. At the age of 15 (and now played by Martin), Joe asks local stud mechanic Jerome (LaBeouf) to take her virginity, which he does in the most perfunctory fashion imaginable. Nevertheless, the beast has been unleashed as Joe and B (Sophie Kennedy Clark) have contests like sneaking on to a train and screwing as many men as possible during the trip. They even form a club at school devoted to the pursuit of sex without love, though B eventually comes to her own realization that "the secret ingredient to sex is love." Joe believes that love complicates things, and continues sleeping with as many men as possible, eventually reconnecting with Jerome when she applies for a secretarial job at a printing company owned by his uncle (Jesper Christensen), even though she has no secretarial skills. She resists Jerome's advances, spending her evenings maintaining a busy schedule of hourly appointments with men who drop in to have sex with her, often passing one another as one arrives and the other leaves. By her own estimate, she's sleeping with up to eight men on a typical evening, and even devises an elaborate system for deciding which men she'll call back among the many messages on her answering machine. At the end of Vol. 1, Joe decides to settle down for domesticity with the now-successful Jerome, when she finds she can no longer reach orgasm.
In a brilliant debut, Martin is the focal point of the first half of NYMPHOMANIAC, and like Watson in BREAKING THE WAVES, she's up to the challenge even though von Trier saves the worst for Joe for when Gainsbourg assumes the role. For the first half, Gainsbourg is limited to sitting in bed as Joe tells Seligman her story, and the kind-hearted intellectual listens intently, often going off on thematic tangents involving fly fishing, cake forks, Bach, Poe, and mathematical theories that sort-of tie into the psychology of what Joe is telling him. Von Trier also gives Christian Slater his best role in years as Joe's doctor father in flashbacks. Joe loves her father deeply, and the two bond over their shared love of trees and flowers, neither feeling a connection to Joe's "cold bitch" mother (Connie Nielsen). As good as Martin and Slater are, the show-stealer for the first half is Uma Thurman in a one-scene stunner as the enraged wife of Mr. H (Hugo Speer), one of Joe's regular hookups. When Mr. H leaves his wife and shocks Joe by showing up at her place with his suitcases in tow, he's followed closely by Mrs H, who's dragged their three young sons along with her. If that wasn't awkward enough, Joe's next guy (Cyron Melville) shows up and everyone watches Mrs. H maniacally melt down, introducing the boys to Joe so they can "put a face to the all the therapy they'll need down the road," and saying "Would it be alright if I show the children the whoring bed? They need to see it! Let's go see Daddy's favorite place!" Thurman is onscreen for less than ten minutes but she makes every second count, and it's an instant classic of laughing while cringing in pained discomfort, one of those rare instances where a cameo is actually Oscar-worthy.
Vol. 2 picks up with Joe and Jerome married and having a baby. A few years pass as Martin exits and Gainsbourg takes over. The child, Marcel, is now three and though they love each other, Joe and Jerome's sex life has stalled. Jerome encourages her to see other men if it will help her psychologically ("If you buy a tiger, you have to keep it fed," he says). This goes on for some time and eventually leads Joe to the mysterious K (Jamie Bell). K seems to be some sort of Craigslist-type sex therapist/sadist who lives in what appears to be an abandoned office building where women show up for appointments to be beaten. K does not offer sex, and he doesn't allow safe words. You do what he says, period. Joe's sessions with K involve him renaming her "Fido," tying her to a couch, bent over, while he whips her bare ass with a riding crop, then inserting his fingers into her vagina to gauge her arousal. Things just get worse for Joe as her sex addiction, self-loathing and degradation cause her to lose her family. She can barely hold down her office job, routinely fucking male co-workers in the restroom or a closet space. She's ordered into therapy, where she lashes out against a society that judges her and tries to shame her. Now in her mid-40s, she eventually loses any feeling of pleasure, as her vagina is so scarred and worn from the thousands of men over three decades of hook-ups that it spontaneously bleeds, and causes numerous bouts of unbearable, debilitating pain. Joe eventually gets a job as a debt collector/extortionist for the shady L (Willem Dafoe), which leads to her shot at redemption by becoming a mentor to troubled teen P (Mia Goth).
While the first half of NYMPHOMANIAC has its share of dark moments, it's also surprisingly amusing in spots, such as Joe comparing her vagina to the automatic doors at a supermarket ("only with a stronger sensor") or when Seligman echoes the audience's call of bullshit with every one of Jerome's improbably hackneyed returns to the narrative. There's also the standard von Trier button-pushing bits like Joe getting wet standing by her father's death bed, and later in Vol 2, unsubtle Christ metaphors and Joe admitting that she feels a sympathetic kinship with a pedophile (Jean-Marc Barr) because of their "outcast" status (drawing thematic parallels to past von Trier outcasts ike the tragic Bess in BREAKING THE WAVES, Selma in DANCER IN THE DARK, and Grace in DOGVILLE and MANDERLAY). But it's the second half where things take a grim turn, largely with the intensely disturbing sequences involving Bell's K (the much-ballyhooed "Silent Duck" moment when K fists Joe is mostly implied, at least in the US cut), and the effect Joe's behavior has on Jerome and Marcel. I'm still not convinced that his recent public implosion isn't some extended von Trier-coordinated publicity stunt, but credit where it's due--funny accent and all, LaBeouf is actually quite good, especially in the second half. Given the extreme length and the myriad of directions the story takes, von Trier generally keeps things on point even when it threatens to derail at any moment. It only starts to feel choppy as things wind down, especially in the debt collection tangent, which comes out of nowhere and doesn't really feel like it belongs. As shown in her scenes at her jobs, Joe really has no skills other than sexual, which wouldn't seem a prerequisite for tough-talking collecting for a loan shark (perhaps the manipulation aspect?). Also, Joe's relationship with P is never fleshed out, at least not to the point where some of P's actions near the end make complete sense. I see the way the tables get turned and Joe is looking at things from another perspective, but it just feels like something's missing or got lost in the editing.
Like Seligman, the viewer is likely to be skeptical of some of Joe's story. There are many times over the course of the four hours when both Joe and to a lesser extent, Seligman seem like the classic "unreliable narrator." In many ways, NYMPHOMANIAC is film loaded with sex and not really specifically about sex. One popular theory is that Joe is a stand-in for von Trier and that Seligman is every stuffy, erudite, out-of-touch film critic who's judged and vilified him, though this involves a revelation by Seligman that I won't spoil. But Seligman doesn't judge Joe (other than being incredulous over some too convenient developments), which makes him different from every other man she's ever known other than her beloved father. There's a lot to take in--no pun intended--with NYMPHOMANIAC, so much so that sometimes the filmmaking itself is easy to overlook. There are some stunning shots and a strong Andrei Tarkovsky vibe throughout--one shot of older Joe finding "her" tree is breathtaking, and clothed or otherwise, the camera simply adores Martin, who has the most hauntingly seductive gaze you've seen in ages. Even seeing it split into two films--if you see it in its American incarnation, it's best to set four hours aside and just binge it--it probably still needs to be seen again in von Trier's original director's cut. Judging from viewing it in this format, it's not von Trier's best film--it seems to start stumbling with the introduction of L, though that's no fault of Dafoe's-- but it may be his most personal one, and one that reveals more of itself on repeat viewings, however soul-crushing and exhausting that may be. But that's vintage Lars von Trier. Love him or hate him, his films get you talking.
