Nymphomaniac (film)

Inspired by a fly fishing lure on the wall behind her and Seligman's love of Izaak Walton's book The Compleat Angler, Joe opens her story by talking about her precocious sexual fascination during her early childhood. Her father (Christian Slater) is a tree-loving doctor whom she adores while her mother (Connie Nielsen) is, as Joe describes her, a "cold bitch". In adolescence, Joe (Stacy Martin) loses her virginity to an arbitrary young man named Jerôme (Shia LaBeouf). This first encounter, which ends with Jerôme casually leaving her to fix his moped, leaves her disappointed, while Seligman observes that the combination of the number of times Jerôme penetrated her, three times vaginally and five times anally, resembles the Fibonacci sequence.

Several years later, Joe engages in a contest with her friend B (Sophie Kennedy Clark) during a train journey; whichever of the two women has sex with the most passengers by the train's arrival at the station wins a bag of chocolate sweets. After having sex in the toilet with several of the men she comes across, Joe wins by performing a blowjob on a passenger in a first-class car, S (Jens Albinus). S is a married man who resists both her and B's advances, but ultimately Joe forces herself on him. Joe tells Seligman her encounter with S is the first of many terrible things she has done, but he waves off her accusation.

Over rugelach and a discussion over the lack of masculinity in men using cake forks to eat pastry, Joe talks about her first experiences with actual love, something she dismisses as "lust with jealousy added". Joe takes on more lovers as she, B, and several friends create a club, "The Little Flock", dedicated to liberating themselves from society's fixation on love. Joe eventually leaves after all the other members end up developing serious attachments to their conquests. As a young adult, Joe drops out of medical school and finds work as a secretary at a printing company. Her first employer is none other than Jerôme. While sex is clearly on his mind, she finds herself avoiding his advances and sleeping with other co-workers, frustrating him. When Joe finally realises she has developed feelings for Jerôme, she writes him a letter. However, she is too late as he has left with his uncle's jealous secretary Liz (Felicity Gilbert), who was fully aware of Joe's feelings. She is immediately fired by his uncle (Jesper Christensen), the actual owner of the company, for her lack of experience and goes back to indulging her nymphomania, despite a yearning for Jerôme.

On one occasion with one of her lovers, H (Hugo Speer), Joe inadvertently causes conflict that makes him leave his wife for her. The distressed Mrs. H (Uma Thurman) arrives and demonises both of them in front of her children, though Joe states in the present that this barely affected her. The situation then becomes more awkward as Joe's next lover, A (Cyron Melville), arrives at the house and finds himself in the middle of Mrs. H's mental breakdown. The family finally leaves, but not before Mrs. H verbally lacerates Joe, slaps her now ex-husband and leaves the apartment wailing.

A conversation about Edgar Allan Poe and his death from delirium tremens reminds Joe of the last time she saw her father. She is the only one to visit him in the hospital as he dies of cancer. Joe's father asks her not to slander her mother, who is afraid of hospitals, for not being by his side, explaining they said their goodbyes. Joe is a firsthand witness as her father deteriorates from an unnamed illness, into fits of violent spasms, paranoid delusions and screams for his wife. To take her mind off her father's suffering, the cause of which she remains naive to, Joe has sexual intercourse with several people at the hospital. When he finally dies, Joe becomes sexually aroused, with a drop of vaginal fluid running down her thigh as she stands in front of the body, and becomes numb with depression.

After Seligman explains how he feels Bach perfected polyphony, Joe uses his example to talk about three lovers leading up to her "cantus firmus". The "bass voice", F (Nicolas Bro) is a tender but predictable man who puts her sexual needs above his own. The "second voice", G (Christian Gade Bjerrum), thrills Joe because of his animalistic control of her in bed. During one of Joe's regular walks in the local park, Jerôme finds her after separating from Liz, a coincidence Seligman finds preposterous, and they embrace. As the two engage in authentically passionate sex – set alongside Joe's experiences with F and G – Joe becomes emotionally distraught when discovering she can no longer "feel anything".

Joe becomes annoyed with Seligman, accusing him of overlooking the severity of her lost sexuality to focus on the allegorical before realising he cannot relate to her stories. He goes on to confirm his asexuality and virginity, but assures her his "innocence" and lack of bias makes him the best man to listen to her story. She becomes inspired to tell him another portion of her life after noticing a Rublev-styled icon of the Virgin Mary and a discussion about the differences between the Eastern Church ("the church of happiness") and the Western Church ("the church of suffering").

Joe reminisces about a field trip as a young girl that suggests she had a vision of Valeria Messalina and the Whore of Babylon looking over her as she levitates and spontaneously has her first orgasm, which shocks Seligman as he explains her orgasm is a mockery of the Transfiguration of Jesus on the Mount. Returning to where she left off in her story, Joe falls into a crisis upon losing her ability to achieve sexual pleasure, though she does find a different sort of pleasure in her time with Jerôme. When the two conceive a baby together, Marcel, Jerôme struggles to keep up with her sexual needs and allows her to see other men. This is shown to be detrimental as he becomes jealous of her endeavors.

Several years later, Joe's sexual endeavors become increasingly adventurous by engaging in a tryst with a pair of African brothers that turns into a botched threesome; the frustration to reclaim her orgasm culminates in visits to K (Jamie Bell), a sadist who violently assaults women seeking his company. The more she visits him, the more neglectful she becomes in her domestic duties. At Christmas, after stopping an unattended Marcel who has wandered out an opened door onto a snowy balcony from coming into any harm, Jerôme forces her to choose between the family and K. She picks the latter and, after receiving an especially brutal beating from K with a cat o' nine tails that allows her to climax again, takes a path of loneliness away from her one and only possibility of a normal life. Marcel is sent to live in a foster home.

To keep the story from ending on an unhappy note, Joe concludes it with the first time K introduced her to "the Silent Duck", which leaves Seligman surprised and impressed at K's talents.

Looking at the mirror facing Seligman's bed, Joe jumps ahead in time. Several years later, Joe has regained pleasure, but her genitalia are left with some irreversible damage due to a lifetime of sexual activity mixed with K's brutality. Her habits are known around her new office, prompting the boss to demand she attend sex addiction therapy.

When asked why she refused to attend therapy, Joe talks about becoming pregnant after leaving Jerôme and Marcel and demanding her doctor abort the 11-week pregnancy, but he insists she speak to a counselor first. The visit to the psychologist (Caroline Goodall) ends disastrously due to Joe's attitude towards the situation. She decides to perform the abortion herself. Using the knowledge she had retained from medical school, Joe aborts the fetus with the use of several household implements and a wire hanger. Back in the present, Joe and Seligman get into a very heated argument regarding Joe's actions, abortion rights in general and Seligman's potential hypocrisy in supporting them while wanting to know nothing about how the actual procedure is performed.

Joe reluctantly attends the meetings and, after ridding her apartment of almost everything in it, attempts sobriety. During one meeting three weeks later, she sees a reflection of her younger self in the mirror, harshly insults every member of the group, including the therapist, and proclaims pride in her nymphomania before walking out.

Joe tells Seligman she is not sure where to conclude her story as she has used every item from around his room to help inspire each "chapter". After a suggestion from him, she notices how the stain from a cup of tea she had earlier thrown in anger looks like a Walther PPK, the same kind of gun her favourite literary character James Bond uses, and knows exactly how and where to end things.

Realising she has no place in "normal" society, Joe turns to organised crime and becomes a debt collector, utilising her extensive knowledge of men, sex, and sadomasochism. She reminisces about a memorable housecall to a man (Jean-Marc Barr) who she initially finds sexually unreadable. She ties him to a chair, strips him and attempts to provoke him with every sexual scenario she can think of. Upon further interrogation, Joe gleans that he is a repressed pedophile. She takes pity on him and fellates him. Joe explains to Seligman how she feels deep compassion for people born with a forbidden sexuality. She strongly identifies with the man's loneliness and status as a sexual outcast, and lauds him for going through life without acting on his aberrant desires.

Joe's superior, L (Willem Dafoe), recommends that she groom an apprentice and suggests P (Mia Goth), the 15-year-old daughter of criminals. Joe is initially repulsed by the idea, but ends up sympathizing with the girl in question. P is vulnerable and lonely, and quickly latches herself onto Joe. Their relationship becomes sexual, and Joe eventually invites P to move into her home while hesitantly teaching P her job.

During one round of debt collection, Joe notices that they are at a house belonging to Jerôme (now played by Michaël Pas) and, to make sure she is not seen, tells P to perform her first solo job. This proves to be a mistake as Joe eventually discovers P is having an affair with Jerôme. After finding her "soul tree" in a failed attempt to leave town, Joe waits for Jerôme and P in the alley between his home and her apartment and pulls a gun she confiscated from P earlier on him. When she pulls the trigger, she forgets to rack the pistol. Jerôme viciously beats Joe and then has sex with P right in front of her, thrusting into P in exactly the same way he once took her virginity. P urinates on her before leaving her as she was at the beginning of the film.

In the present, Seligman suggests how the circumstances of Joe's life might have been due to differences in gender representation; all of the stigma, guilt and shame she felt for her actions made her fight back aggressively "like a man", ultimately "forgetting" to rack the gun because her human worth would not allow her to kill someone, even Jerôme. Joe, who has until this moment been playing devil's advocate to Seligman's assumptions, finally feels at ease, having unburdened her story to someone whom she truly considers a friend. She vows to rid herself of her sexuality, no matter how difficult it is. She says she is too tired to go on and asks to go to sleep.

As Joe begins to drift off, Seligman silently returns with his pants off and attempts to rape her. Joe wakes up and reaches for the gun. Seligman protests and attempts to justify his behaviour, but Joe shoots him, grabs her things, and flees the apartment.

Executive producer and Zentropa co-founder Peter Aalbæk Jensen revealed that the film is to be two parts. "We are making two films. It is a big operation. I personally hope that we should be ready for Cannes next year. We will shoot both and edit both – and we want to finish both at the same time."[17] He explained there will be two versions of each film: an explicit cut and a softer cut.[17]

LaBeouf got his role in Nymphomaniac by sending a tape of himself having intercourse with his girlfriend Karolyn Pho to von Trier.[18] Slater got connected to von Trier via his agent being in Denmark and used makeup under his eyes to make himself look old enough to be Joe's father.[19]

LaBeouf said in August 2012, "The movie is what you think it is. It is Lars von Trier, making a movie about what he's making. For instance, there's a disclaimer at the top of the script that basically says we're doing it for real. Everything that is illegal, we'll shoot in blurred images. Other than that, everything is happening. ... [V]on Trier's dangerous. He scares me. And I'm only going to work now when I'm terrified."[20]

Principal photography occurred between 28 August–9 November 2012 in Cologne and Hilden, Germany, and in Ghent, Belgium.[15]

To produce scenes of simulated sex, von Trier used digital compositing to superimpose the genitals of pornographic film actors onto the bodies of the film's actors.[21] Producer Louise Vesth explained during the Cannes Film Festival:

We shot the actors pretending to have sex and then had the body doubles, who really did have sex, and in post we will digital impose the two. So above the waist it will be the star and the [sic] below the waist it will be the doubles.[21]

Gainsbourg and Martin further revealed that prosthetic vaginas and closed sets were used during filming. Martin stated that her acting experience for the film was enjoyable and, after explaining that the film's characters are a reflection of the director himself, referred to the process as an "honour."[22] Martin also stated that shooting the sex scenes was a bit boring due to their technical nature.[23]

A seven-track soundtrack was released digitally by Zentropa on 27 June 2014, containing a mix of classical and modern rock music, along with two sound clips from the prologue of the film.[24][25]

Nymphomaniac initially received an NC-17 from the Motion Picture Association of America in early 2014. The film, however, surrendered the rating and was released without any MPAA rating.[34]