The first thing to know (check the running time) about the newest film by the pranksterish Dane who enunciated an inflexible set of rules called Dogma and then routinely ignored them is that it's long. Conceived and released in the US as two separate films (volumes 1 and 2), it plays here as a two-parter with an interval, running more than four hours in all. (Von Trier wanted it to be five-and-a-half; the present "abridged and censored" cut had his consent, though not his approval).
The second (check the censor's rating) is that it is eye-wateringly sexually explicit. Many of the sexual encounters and their settings employ the visual style of porn movies, although there's an antic, even quaint, tone to them and a plainly ironic intent: it's hard to imagine how the erotic content could be less prurient, if only because the coupling is so frequent, energetic and prodigal.
The third (check the title's orthography) is that it's an often playful undertaking, von Trier's most bleakly funny film since The Idiots. Many of the most hilarious sequences cannot decently be described in a family newspaper, but the story is laced with digressive references to angling, the structure of Bach's music and Fibonacci numbers and it is ultimately more likely to arouse the intellect than the libido.
The nymphomaniac of the title (don't expect the deeply problematic nature of the term to be contested) is Joe (Gainsbourg), discovered in the opening scene in a bruised and crumpled heap in a back alley of an anonymous city. She is rescued by a lonely bookish recluse named Seligman (Skarsgard), who takes her to his flat, serves her tea and asks to hear her story, despite her warning that "it will be long and moral".
Its opening line - "I discovered my c*** at age 2" - sets the tone for what follows: a Socratic dialogue cum confessional erotic memoir by turns coarse, tender, intimate and brutal. The first half follows Joe from the loss of her virginity to the loss of her orgasmic response, which she spends the second half trying to recover with the assistance of everybody from a professional sadist to two well-endowed African immigrants.
