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The Snowman (2017)

18 Wednesday Oct 2017

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D: Tomas Alfredson / 119m

Cast: Michael Fassbender, Rebecca Ferguson, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Val Kilmer, J.K. Simmons, Toby Jones, David Dencik, Chloë Sevigny, James D’Arcy, Jonas Karlsson, Adrian Dunbar, Ronan Vibert, Michael Yates

Another week, another literary adaptation, another disappointment… Sometimes it’s hard to understand just what happened when a movie based on a well regarded novel hits our screens with all the turgid urgency of dripping sludge. Who do you blame? The director? Maybe. They are in overall charge of how the movie looks and sounds and how thrilling or dramatic or funny or affecting it should be. Or maybe it’s the screenwriter(s). Maybe they didn’t “get” the novel or work out the best way of transferring it to the big screen. Maybe it’s the cast. Maybe they weren’t “feeling it” and couldn’t find their way to putting in good performances. Or perhaps it’s just something a little less tangible, the tone perhaps, or the pacing, or the emotion of the piece. Maybe – maybe – it’s a combination of all these.

That certainly seems to be the case with The Snowman, an adaptation of the novel by Jo Nesbø, and the first movie to feature his troubled detective, Harry Hole (played here by Michael Fassbender in a portrayal that seems based around Hole having only the one expression). Now, if you’ve read this paragraph up til now and you’ve been pronouncing Hole as in a hole in the ground, then you have the first problem that the movie can’t or won’t overcome: no one can even pronounce the lead character’s name correctly. Harry’s surname is pronounced Ho-ly as in holy scripture, or as with this movie, what the holy hell is happening? When the makers of a movie can’t even get the lead character’s name right, then what chance does the rest of the movie have? In short, hardly any chance at all.

A rushed production that finished shooting in April 2016, but which required reshoots in the spring of this year, the movie quickly gets bogged down by the requirements of a muddled script that wants to be regarded as another excellent example of the awkwardly named Scandi-noir. All the elements are there to be ticked off one by one: the dark, brooding lead detective, the dark, brooding atmosphere, the dark, brooding nature of the murders, the killer’s dark, brooding psychological profile, the dark, brooding visual backdrop – clearly if it wasn’t dark and brooding then it wasn’t allowed to remain in the screenplay. But just as having too much of a good thing can spoil that very same thing, having too little in the way of structure, common sense and thrills can also damage a movie’s chances, and The Snowman sabotages its own semi-focused ambitions at every turn.

For a thriller that should grip like a vice, there are just too many risible moments that offer unfortunate injections of humour, such as when James D’Arcy’s character reveals that he’s “infertile. I can’t have children”, just to make sure there’s no one in the audience who won’t understand what infertile means. Then there are the dreadful, logic-takes-a-beating moments such as when the killer uses a mobile phone they know the police will be monitoring to help them pin the blame on someone else, but who then forgets that they can be traced through the use of another mobile phone later on. Scenes come and go that don’t always follow on from each other (though it’s more disheartening to think there might be a longer Director’s Cut out there somewhere), and Harry’s maverick cop activities keep him in the front line no matter how often he acts independently of the rest of the Oslo police force, while Rebecca Ferguson’s impassioned rookie, Katrine, gets sidelined the first time she uses her own initiative. Some of this is in service of the plot, but mostly it just seems that in piecing together the key points of Nesbø’s novel, screenwriters Hossein Amini, Peter Straughan, and Søren Sveistrup have decided to only include the events from every other chapter in the novel, and not adapt the novel as a whole.

Characterisations suffer too as a result of this approach, with Harry’s alcoholism only of any relevance in introducing him to the audience, and to provide a degree of drama surrounding his continual inability to spend time with the son (Yates) of his old flame, Rakel (Gainsbourg). Being an alcoholic isn’t allowed to get in the way of showing just how good a detective Harry really is, and so it becomes less and less effective as a character defect the longer the movie goes on. Likewise the relationship between Harry and Rakel is confusing because there’s no back story for the viewer to latch onto (it might have helped if the producers had decided to adapt the first book in the Harry Hole series, instead of the seventh). The killer’s motives remain vague and unconvincing throughout, and their need to build a snowman at the scene of each crime is as baffling at the end as it is at the beginning. It’s as if it’s use as a signature “flourish” by the killer is all that’s needed. (A reason for it? Ah, don’t worry about it; it’ll look cool.)

Alfredson has spoken about the challenges of making the movie within a short period of time, and without a completed script, leading to issues that were discovered in the editing suite. But while it does seem that there are huge gaps in the narrative, and the movie has to work extra hard to maintain any tension or sense of urgency, it’s the flatness of the drama and the lethargy in certain scenes that can’t be explained away just because of a shortened production period. In the end, Nesbø’s page-turner has become a movie that fails to match up to its energy and verve, and which remains a leaden, dreary experience for the viewer. The performances are adequate (though Kilmer, worryingly, looks as if he’s trying to impersonate present day Gary Busey), and Dion Beebe’s cinematography does at least capture the beautiful isolation of rural Norway in often stunning fashion. But otherwise, this is a routine, formulaic serial killer movie that does itself no favours from beginning to end.

Rating: 4/10 – muddled and convoluted aren’t words that any potential viewer wants to hear, but they describe The Snowman perfectly; uninspired and chock full of thriller clichés, the movie stumbles along trying to be clever and effective, but instead ends up putting a finish to any notion of an intended Harry Hole franchise.

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Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer (2016)

14 Wednesday Jun 2017

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D: Joseph Cedar / 118m

Cast: Richard Gere, Lior Ashkenazi, Michael Sheen, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Dan Stevens, Steve Buscemi, Harris Yulin, Yehuda Almagor, Neta Riskin, Hank Azaria, Scott Shepherd, Josh Charles, Isaach De Bankolé

Norman Oppenheimer (Gere) is an aging, low-level fixer, a facilitator who wants to help people succeed in business, but who doesn’t have the necessary contacts to make things happen or to avoid being looked on with suspicion, or being dismissed out of hand. When he approaches a young investment banker, Bill Kavish (Stevens), with a deal that could make Kavish’s boss, Jo Wilf (Yulin), a fortune, he’s given the brush off. With the deal involving Israeli tax write-offs, Norman turns his attention to rising Israeli politician, Micha Eshel (Ashkenazi), who is in New York for a brief visit. He “bumps into” Eshel outside a men’s clothing store where Eshel is admiring a pair of shoes. Norman buys Eshel the shoes – as a gift – and persuades him to to join Norman at a party he’s going to that night at the home of Wilf’s main rival, Arthur Taub (Charles). But Eshel doesn’t go, and Norman’s plan to get the two men together (and involve Taub in the deal for the Israeli tax write-offs) falls apart.

Three years later, Norman is still committed to helping people achieve great success in their lives, when Eshel returns to New York as the new Israeli Prime Minister. At a reception, Norman and Eshel are reunited, and Eshel welcomes him into his inner circle as a close friend. But any further access becomes difficult, with Eshel’s chief advisor, Duby (Almagor), ensuring Norman’s calls go unanswered. Meanwhile, the synagogue that Norman is affiliated with is threatened with being sold off unless $14 million can be raised to save it. Norman takes it on himself to do so, and when Eshel asks for Norman’s help in getting his son into Harvard, he sees a way of turning the favour into a chance to save the synagogue. But his plan doesn’t work out, and Norman begins to weave a web of lies and half-truths in an effort to keep his relationship with Eshel, and the synagogue, alive in the eyes of everyone around him. But when he talks to a special Israeli investigator (Gainsbourg) on a train, and innocently mentions his connection with Eshel – and those shoes – it puts in motion a series of events that Norman couldn’t have predicted, and which leaves him having to make a decision that will have far-reaching consequences for everyone he’s involved with – and most of all, for Norman himself.

In recent years you could be forgiven for wondering if Richard Gere had given up on Hollywood altogether, and had decided to make only low budget movies for the rest of his career. The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2015), his first mainstream movie since Chicago (2002), reminded us that he could still pull off the kind of matinee idol role he essayed so successfully in the Eighties and Nineties, but it was a surprise to see him in something so pleasantly superficial. Now, after several trips to the indie well, Gere has found a role that suits him as the character actor he prefers to be known as, and which offers him the chance to give his best performance in years. As the indefatigably persistent Norman Oppenheimer, Gere the matinee idol is buried beneath a camel hair coat, flat cap, unflattering hairstyle, and dangling ear buds. There are times when Gere doesn’t even look like Gere, so complete is his transformation. He gives a fascinating portrayal of a man whose entire life is predicated around helping others, of arranging meetings between remarkable men while steadfastly remaining in the background.

This does make Joseph Cedar’s follow up to his Oscar-nominated Footnote (2011) (which also starred Ashkenazi) a little difficult to get to grips with at first, as Norman’s self-effacing personality threatens to overwhelm the narrative. He’s a nice guy, but he’s still not someone you’d want hanging around in your life all the time – which is exactly what he would do. And even though Norman’s motives are entirely genuine and full of good intentions, there’s something about his demeanour that keeps the players he tries to associate with from embracing him entirely (the analogy that would best describe him is the one where he’s the kid who’s chosen last by his classmates to be on someone’s team). We also learn very little about Norman, about his life or his beginnings, how he came to be a fixer. We never see him at home either; instead he retreats to the synagogue when he needs to take a break. And he seems to be financially independent as we never see him receive any money from anyone. He’s a mystery to the viewer, and more so to the characters he interacts with, who never quite manage to interpret his actions as anything other than self-serving.

Cedar’s impressively detailed script gains momentum as the story unfolds, with Norman in the midst of a web of his own making and finding himself trapped at its centre. But Norman never gives up, and though the solution he arrives at is detrimental to himself he doesn’t hesitate to do what he must. And everything he does is for someone else’s benefit; and he doesn’t care if people aren’t appreciative. It’s not the point. Cedar surrounds Norman with a cadre of (mostly) unlikeable contacts and movers and shakers and allows them to manipulate Norman for their own ends, while Norman continues being Norman and sticking to his guns. As the movie progresses, it becomes easier and easier to understand him, and to appreciate what he’s doing, even if the why is missing. In many ways, it’s better that Norman’s motivations remain hidden, as it somehow makes the resolution to his story all the more satisfying.

Gere is surrounded by a talented cast, some of whom appear whenever necessary – Gainsbourg, Stevens, Yulin – and some, like Ashkenazi, whose involvement is absolutely essential to the success of Cedar’s movie. The Israeli-born actor gives a terrific performance as a politician whose moral compass is gradually pulled askew in the name of political expediency. Cedar gifts the actor with a tremendous monologue about the nature of compromise, and Ashkenazi delivers it with scathing wit and undeniable rancour. It’s a stand out moment, and shows that Cedar isn’t going to fall back on standard tropes for his characters, even when they’re engaged in somewhat predictable political manoeuvrings. He’s also constructed a screenplay that is humorous and darkly comic, flecked with delicious subtleties that add to the screenplay’s already impressive nature, and which makes much of the dialogue unexpectedly tart and/or subversive. With Cedar also employing a split screen effect that affords an unexpected emotional weight when it’s used, Norman is a movie that is full of surprises, and definitely worth seeking out.

Rating: 8/10 – the kind of intelligent, well thought out, and observant movie that rarely gets the attention it deserves, Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer is quite simply a joy to watch, and very easy to recommend; with Gere on such good form, and Cedar in full control of the various elements that make up his entertaining screenplay, the movie may tread some well-worn paths on it’s way to the end, but this shouldn’t put off anyone from seeing it.

Charlotte for Ever (1986)

07 Tuesday Apr 2015

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Charlotte for Ever

D: Serge Gainsbourg / 90m

Cast: Serge Gainsbourg, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Roland Bertin, Roland Dubillard, Anne Zamberlan, Anne Le Guernec, Sabeline Campo

Stanley (Serge Gainsbourg) is a movie maker who is down on his luck. His wife has recently died in a car accident and he has no money; all he has left is his daughter, Charlotte (Gainsbourg). He tries to get an advance for a new script from his friend, Herman (Dubillard), but it comes with a condition: he must come up with the script in a week’s time.

Charlotte blames him for the death of her mother. The car she was in, and which Stanley was driving, crashed into a petrol tanker. The subsequent explosion killed Stanley’s wife, and left him with a burned hand. He displays regret and sadness at her death but refuses to be made to feel guilty about what happened. Charlotte battles against him, being obstinate and aggressive and continually challenging his assertions about the accident and his lack of culpability. She also takes issue with his liaisons with young women who appear at their home on a regular basis.

Stanley receives a visit from his doctor, Leon (Bertin) who is gay and has recently split up from his boyfriend. Leon is depressed and unhappy, but Stanley is unsupportive toward him; only Charlotte shows him any sympathy. His visit encourages Stanley to think more on the script he needs to write. But instead of coming up with something original he decides to plagiarise the work of Benjamin Constant. When the script is finished, Stanley gives it to Herman who thinks it’s terrific. Leon is present when he reads through it, though, and he tells Herman what Stanley has done. Herman is furious, but Stanley is oblivious and hits on him again for money.

Charlotte encounters Adelaide (Le Guernec), one of her father’s conquests, and angry at her (and him), she attacks her. Stanley discovers them and makes Adelaide leave before he attempts to placate Charlotte. She shows some remorse for her actions, and later, tells her father that she never really blamed him for her mother’s death.

Charlotte for Ever - scene

With a screenplay filled to the brim with literary and sexual references galore, as well as a few literally sexual references, Charlotte for Ever, the brainchild of multi-talented Serge Gainsbourg, is a movie that any viewer will hope is just that: a movie. Because if it isn’t, and it only semi-accurately describes the relationship between real-life father and daughter Serge and Charlotte, then this psycho-sexual drama is likely to leave a sour taste in the mouth.

From the opening scene where Stanley tells Herman how his attention has been transferred from his wife to Charlotte, and his speech becomes more and more erotically charged (with more than one reference to Nabokov’s Lolita to reinforce the issue), the movie becomes an uncomfortable experience to watch as he manipulates his conversations with his daughter, and the viewer is left wondering if Gainsbourg the writer/director/father isn’t averse to sharing his real feelings for Gainsbourg the actress/daughter. Charlotte Gainsbourg was fifteen when the movie was made, and there are scenes where she appears topless, including one that involves her being manhandled by her father. It may be that Charlotte was a willing, and completely aware, participant in the movie, but the fact that Gainsbourg chose his daughter for the role, and not another actress, doesn’t make it any easier to appreciate.

Added to this is Gainsbourg’s continual use of sexual rhetoric and innuendo, best displayed (if “best” is the right word) in a scene where Charlotte is doing her homework. It consists of a series of questions that she asks for his help with. One question is: “What quality do you most admire in a woman?” Stanley’s response is: “Her wetness.” There are other examples where Stanley’s blunt, unapologetic use of single entendres is used and most of them are wince-inducing. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that Gainsbourg is playing with the audience, but the fact that he’s using his daughter as part of the game makes it all the more unconscionable. It’s also like seeing a naughty schoolboy trying to shock his teachers: the schoolboy knows what he’s doing will cause a stir, but he doesn’t have the context that would make it more palatable – or forgivable.

With the supporting characters in place for Stanley (and Gainsbourg) to feel superior to, the movie ends up looking and sounding more like a vanity piece than a fully realised drama. Everyone talks in an arch, mannered way of speaking that features literary quotes, apothegms, precepts and quasi-philosophical assertions that are only superficially astute. It’s the type of cod-intellectual rambling that is meant to make its author sound erudite and cultivated, but which in reality makes them sound asinine instead. Gainsbourg gives himself a lot of these meandering speeches – and not one sounds convincing.

The performances suffer as a result, with Gainsbourg appearing disinterested in his own movie and prowling around in scenes as if he can’t quite decide which mark he should be hitting. He continually grabs and paws at his daughter, and wears a black glove on his right hand to denote his injury from the car crash. Alas, this gloved hand is used more as an affectation as Gainsbourg waves it around to indicate all sorts of feelings that he can’t clarify through speech or expression. In the end, it’s a lazy, semi-committed performance that soon becomes boring to watch. As for Charlotte, she provides emotional responses to Stanley’s behaviour that match the affected way in which he behaves, but which prove too wayward and inconsistent for comfort. There are glimpses of the slightly removed acting style that has stood her in good stead in the years since, but here she’s pretty much a puppet being moved around at will by her father.

Curious viewers, or fans of Gainsbourg pére et fille, will find no one to sympathise with (or recognise), and even less to engage with beyond a handful of gratuitous scenes of female nudity. The ending is abrupt and unrewarding given all that’s gone before, but at least it brings to a close a tale that manages, with considerable ease, to be both tawdry and pretentious.

Rating: 2/10 – sometimes a movie is just a dud and that’s all there is to it, and Charlotte for Ever is the movie that proves the rule; with only Gainsbourg’s disco-themed score to recommend it, this sad, alienating movie shows him not at the peak of his powers (which were considerable) but declining badly – and seemingly unconcerned.

NOTE: The “trailer” is more of a promo video for the song that plays over the opening credits (and at various times during the movie).

Nymph()maniac Vol. II (2013)

28 Saturday Jun 2014

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Nymphomaniac Vol. II

D: Lars von Trier / 123m

Cast: Charlotte Gainsbourg, Stellan Skarsgård, Stacy Martin, Shia LaBeouf, Jamie Bell, Mia Goth, Willem Dafoe, Michael Pas, Jean-Marc Barr, Kate Ashfield, Christian Slater, Udo Kier, Caroline Goodall, Sophie Kennedy Clark, Ananya Berg

Now living with Jerôme but still unable to achieve orgasm, Joe falls pregnant; she has a son, Marcel, but her maternal instincts are dulled by her efforts to reclaim her ability to orgasm.  Her sexual demands begin to alienate Jerôme, who suggests she takes other lovers as it’s clear he can’t give her what she wants.  She does so but it triggers a jealous reaction in Jerôme and proves unsatisfactory as well.  Joe then learns about K (Bell), a sadist, and visits him in the hope that by exploring this aspect of sexuality it might help her.  Her visits require the services of a babysitter while she is gone, and one afternoon the sitter fails to show up; Joe leaves to see K anyway, leaving Marcel alone in their apartment.  When she returns, Marcel is safe but Jerôme is aware of her desertion, and eventually he challenges her: be a better mother or he will leave with Marcel, and Joe will never see them again.  Unable to stop seeing K, Joe visits him again; when she returns home, Jerôme and Marcel are gone.

Having stopped seeing K, Joe reverts to having sex with any man she wants, particularly at work.  Told by her boss that her behaviour is unacceptable, Joe is pressured into attending a therapy group for sex addicts.  The counsellor (Goodall) tells Joe that in order to control her sexual addiction she must first remove anything that might provoke a sexual response; this will make controlled abstinence that much easier.  This proves impossible and Joe realises she is denying her true nature.  When she next attends the group, she rails against them before leaving for good.

The next part of Joe’s story sees her working for a man called L (Dafoe).  She works for him as a debt collector, using her knowledge of the darker aspects of men’s natures to get them to pay up.  Joe is successful in her work, but as the years go by, L suggests she takes on and train a successor.  L has a candidate for her, a fifteen year old girl called P (Goth) who comes from a family of hardened criminals and who is lonely and shy.  Unconvinced at first, Joe takes P under her wing.  Their relationship deepens over the years until, when P is of age, Joe reveals the work she does and P’s planned part in it.  P isn’t put off and begins to take a more active role in Joe’s work, though when she pulls out a gun and threatens to shoot a debtor, Joe is angry with her.  This leads to an estrangement between the two that leads to disaster when P is given her first solo assignment.  The debtor proves to be Jerôme (Pas).  Unbeknownst to Joe, they begin a relationship, seeing each other whenever P has to collect a payment for the debt Jerôme owes.  On the night of the last collection, Joe follows P to Jerôme’s house and sees them together.  She is unsure at first at what to do, but decides to kill Jerôme and is making her way through the alleyway where Seligman found her when she hears Jerôme’s voice.  He is with P.  Joe tries to shoot him but the gun doesn’t work and he beats her up, thus bringing the story full circle.

Nymphomaniac Vol. II - scene

With the playfulness and abundant humour of Vol. I toned down from the outset, Nymph()maniac Vol. II is a different movie altogether, darker, more austere, less spirited (there is still humour to be found, though).  Joe’s quest to reclaim her orgasm makes her more sexually adventurous, but it also makes her more vulnerable, and her brief foray into motherhood shows how self-destructive she really is, placing her physical needs over the needs of her child.  The correlation between drug addict and sex addict is also given its strongest expression through her visits to K, as Joe desperately seeks a solution to her predicament.  In the same way that a drug addict will take stronger and stronger drugs in an effort to boost their being high, so too does Joe seek more extreme sexual experiences in her attempt to feel again.  (There’s an argument that Joe is also punishing herself during this period but as she finds release by manipulating the mode of K’s sadism, it doesn’t really hold true.)

If Joe’s addiction leads her into more and more “dangerous” territory, it also leads her to the re-confirmed belief that her sexual appetite is validated by her refusal to love.  But, in truth, it’s a defence mechanism, and shows just how scared Joe is of commitment; her inability to feel anything is brought about through Jerôme’s return and their relationship becoming more meaningful.  By reinforcing Joe’s avoidance of her emotions, von Trier shows the loneliness that she tries to hide, and how it distances her from the people around her.  Having her become a debt collector makes a certain kind of sense, as her neutrality in the face of others’ fear or pain makes her a perfect enforcer.

But as with all the best melodramas – and ultimately this is exactly that – Joe falls in love again, unexpectedly, with P.  But it’s a brief, not too convincing affair, with Joe seemingly ambushed by P’s feelings for her.  As P begins to assert her own identity, it becomes inevitable that Joe will not survive the encounter emotionally, and P’s betrayal of her with Jerôme sees her become an avenging angel, determined to destroy forever whatever fragile happiness she’s ever had.  It’s inevitable though that Joe’s plan will backfire because she’s only ever had control over her own body, and her distance from others precludes any influence she thinks she might have (except when she’s backed up by two heavies collecting money).

In the end, the viewer will find Joe’s emotional detachment either difficult to appreciate – it makes her hard to like, particularly in Vol. II – or a necessary conceit without which the movie would struggle to maintain any sense of coherence.  Either way, her selfish attitude to those around her, and her efforts to control them, make Joe a bold but regrettably galling human being to spend four hours with.  Some of her assertions during her badinage with Seligman are so pompous as to defy von Trier’s obvious intelligence: anyone who knows even the slightest bit about organised religion will know that the statement, “the Western church is the church of suffering and the Eastern church is the church of happiness” is so far from the truth to be almost (in its own way) heretical.  With quotes like these weighing things down, Joe’s assertions serve only to highlight just how remote she is from the rest of society, and even though von Trier champions her need to be true to herself, her lack of real introspection makes her appear, by the movie’s end (or beginning), shallow and intransigent.

There have been complaints that Vol. II, by being darker etc., is less of a movie than Vol. I.  But Joe’s story is one that follows a natural progression and the decision to split the movie in two appears to be more of a commercial decision than a creative one.  It is better to see both volumes in succession so as to retain the natural flow of what was always meant to be one four-hour movie, but, ultimately, von Trier’s decision to split the narrative makes no difference to the effect of the overall story.

On the performance side, Gainsbourg’s fearless approach to the material benefits the movie enormously and there’s rarely a moment where her conviction is in doubt.  She does her best to make Joe a sympathetic character but is equally unafraid to show her in a less than pleasant light, her commitment to the role going some way to mitigating the missteps in von Trier’s script.  As the outwardly concerned Seligman, Skarsgård maintains his inquisitive, supportive stance in the light of Joe’s revelations, but is given an horrendous final scene that destroys everything the character has come to stand for.  Martin’s presence, despite Gainsbourg’s proficiency, is not as missed as might be expected, while LaBeouf remains as hard to watch as in Vol. I.  The newcomers to the tale – Dafoe, Goth, Bell – acquit themselves well (Bell in particular is unexpectedly creepy as K), and it’s nice to see Slater and Berg (ten year old Joe) in flashback.

As before, von Trier’s technical control over the material remains in place, though some of the aforementioned missteps make it difficult to give him the benefit of the doubt when some scenes appear included merely for effect (the restaurant scene involving a number of spoons is a case in point, but it redeems itself by being very, very funny).  He’s on less firmer ground with the philosophical digressions that occupy Joe’s time with Seligman, and they become more and more contrived as the movie develops.  And the photography by Manuel Alberto Claro is as beautiful and decorous as in the first movie (which shouldn’t be a surprise).

Rating: 7/10 – no better or worse than Vol. I, Nymph()maniac Vol. II concludes Joe’s story in semi-triumphant style but maintains the faults found in the first movie; archly effective in places, and dismaying in others, von Trier’s conclusion to his Trilogy of Depression shows the wily old fox of arthouse cinema still as infuriating and entertaining (in equal measure) as he’s always been.

Nymph()maniac Vol. I (2013)

27 Friday Jun 2014

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Nymphomaniac Vol. I

D: Lars von Trier / 118m

Cast: Charlotte Gainsbourg, Stellan Skarsgård, Stacy Martin, Shia LaBeouf, Christian Slater, Uma Thurman, Sophie Kennedy Clark, Hugo Speer, Connie Nielsen, Ananya Berg, Jesper Christensen, Nicolas Bro

In a secluded alleyway, a man called Seligman (Skarsgård) finds a woman (Gainsbourg) lying unconscious on the ground; she’s been attacked.  He takes her back to his home, where she tells him the story of her life, and how she came to be in the alleyway where he found her.  The woman’s name is Joe, and she tells Seligman that from a very young age she was aware of her vagina and the pleasure it could give her.  She relates a number of instances from her childhood, and mentions her father, a doctor (Slater) whom she loved very much.  As a teenager (Martin) she chooses a boy, Jerôme (LaBeouf), to take her virginity, and so, begins a relationship with him that will continue off and on for the rest of her life.

Joe relates her time having sex with strangers on trains as a game she played with her friend B (Clark), and the club they subsequently form where members are not allowed to have sex more than once with the same person.  However, B falls in love and Joe ends their friendship in disgust.  Some time later, Joe applies for a job at a printing house, and despite having no skills or experience, is taken on.  This proves to be because her boss is the same Jerôme who took her virginity.  Jerôme wants to have sex with her but she refuses his advances, while at the same time she has sex with all the other men in the office.  But her willingness to see Jerôme suffer has a different effect and Joe stops having sex altogether; like B she too has fallen in love.  She builds up the courage to tell him but takes too long: when she arrives at work one day prepared to tell Jerôme how she feels about him, she finds he’s now married and travelling abroad.

Joe’s reaction is to have sex with as many men as possible, and to keep a string of lovers.  She tells of one man, H (Speer), who she tried to break up with by telling him he’ll never leave his wife and family, but this is exactly what he does, and it leads to an uncomfortable visit by his wife (Thurman) and their children.  But Joe admits the whole thing left her unmoved.  It’s only when her father dies in hospital that Joe is moved at all.  Continuing to juggle both work and several lovers, Joe finds herself feeling sad at times and while walking in a park one day, she is reunited with Jerôme.  He tells her his marriage isn’t working, and they go back to Joe’s place and have sex, but partway through she realises that she can’t feel anything physically.

Nymphomaniac Vol. I - scene

With all the hype surrounding von Trier’s Nymph()maniac duology (particularly the explicit sex scenes – always guaranteed to draw people’s attention), the casual viewer might be put off by a movie that revels in its bad taste highlights and caustic humour, but with Vol. I that would be a mistake.  After the dreary, depressing Antichrist (2009) and the mock-opera bombast of Melancholia (2011), the wily old fox of arthouse cinema has decided to make a comedy about sex, and not just about sex itself, but a vast array of preconceptions about sex, and its relationship with pain, betrayal, neglect, lust, sacrifice, and perhaps worst of all, love.

As a young child, Joe is presented as thoughtful, intelligent, acquisitive and precocious.  Her relationship with her father appears to hold the key to her future behaviour – Joe seeks what her father can’t give her – and on a basic psychological level it’s obvious why Joe behaves in the way she does.  But Joe isn’t interested in the emotional mechanics of sex but in the overriding physical need that pushes her to seek out so many men and so many sexual experiences.  Joe wants to be true to herself – to her vagina – but what she learns, and resolutely pushes to one side, is that emotion can enhance her encounters.  And yet, as her relationship with Jerôme shows, feelings and emotions can augment her experiences and enrich them.  It’s her refusal to admit this, or even trust it, that makes Joe such a sad figure: she’ll never find true happiness unless she allows herself to love.

In telling her story, Joe and Seligman indulge in some philosophical game-playing as Joe keeps referring to herself as sinful, while Seligman refutes her assertions at every turn. These interludes often find von Trier at his most mischievous as Joe seeks to justify her behaviour where clearly she has no need to.  Alluding to various topics, such as fly fishing and Fibonacci numbers, Seligman acts as the audience’s representative, taking Joe’s revelations in his stride and remaining unaffected throughout.  Some of the connections von Trier comes up with hail from the wrong side of contrivance, but despite this they have a certain élan to them that keeps them amusing even if they do sound pretentious.

Again, it’s the humour that counts, whether it’s Joe and B trying to be sophisticated while seducing men on the train, or Joe and Seligman arguing over the attributes of a cake fork, or even LaBeouf’s horrendous English accent (even worse than Dick Van Dyke’s Cockney horror in Mary Poppins).  Joe’s bed-hopping behaviour has its own in-built jocosity, appearing in stark contrast to the laboured protestations of guilt that the older Joe regales Seligman with.  It’s fun to see her treat men in the same way that men often treat women – as objects there to provide pleasure and little else – and even the tirade offered up by Mrs H. is entertaining with its desperate, cloying sarcasm projected as barely disguised venom.  There’s also a nice line in visual humour – Jerôme stopping an elevator in order to seduce Joe and finding out when he’s rebuffed that it’s stopped between floors; Seligman envisioning Joe’s somewhat different approach to “education”; the penis montage – although the equivalent verbal humour isn’t quite as prominent.

On the dramatic side, Joe’s encounter with Mrs H is the movie’s highlight, while Joe’s (one-sided) romance with Jerôme appears more of a plot device to keep Joe shagging lots of men than a real development for either character.  That she meets up with him again at the end isn’t much of a surprise – there’s unfinished business to be dealt with, after all – but the movie’s cliffhanger ending successfully pulls the rug out from under the audience’s feet with aplomb.  Her relationship with her father is honest and straightforward, and the scenes where he’s in hospital are genuinely moving (thanks largely to the playing of Messrs Slater and Martin).

As the younger Joe, Martin gives a stand-out performance, Joe’s initial enjoyment of sex before it becomes more and more of an addiction is so well depicted that it comes as a bit of a shock that this is her first movie.  But even when things begin to get darker, Martin keeps her focus and keeps the audience watching: it’s a bravura turn and easily award-worthy.  As the older Joe, Gainsbourg is mesmerising, her care-worn face telling of hardships that not even she can adequately talk about.  She dominates her scenes with Skarsgård, his nervous, twitchy style of acting at odds with her confident, self-assured determinism.  Skarsgård makes the most of Seligman’s “learned” naiveté, while there’s sterling support from Slater, Thurman and Clark.  Sadly, the same can’t be said for LaBeouf, who provides the worst performance in the movie, his attempts at creating a realistic character continually being undermined by his limitations as an actor.

Von Trier’s direction, as you might expect, is controlled and tightly focused, and he uses a variety of shots – often in the same scene – to show the fractured nature of Joe’s unique view of the world.  He’s on less solid ground with his script, with Joe’s often brittle approach to other people and her own feelings going some way to making her a little less sympathetic than expected.  Having said that, there are plenty of clever touches, and von Trier has a sure knack of cutting away from a scene at the right moment.  His cinematographer, Manuel Alberto Claro, gives the movie an appropriately clinical look that reflects the sense of detachment that Joe feels with regard to her life and history.

Rating: 7/10 – brimming with ideas (not all of which are effectively rendered), Nymph()maniac Vol. I is a cinematic confection dressed up in serious attire; an intriguing movie for the most part, but hampered by its unnecessary lack of an ending.