Yesterday I had the privilege of seeing Lars von Trier's newest, controversial piece of work, Nymphomaniac. And while I only got to see the first installment of the two-part piece, I left with the same blood-rushed feeling I always get after seeing a film that I loved. And as I gleefully
walked back to the office, I ignored the impulse to grab strangers on the street and apprise them of what I'd just seen.
Sure, I saw Shia LaBeouf's fully erect penis. CGI or not, I'd plagiarize that bad boy too if I was the Beoufster. But in all seriousness, his or not, it was a sight to behold. So was the endless cavalcade of emotionally-bereft intercourse: missionary, oral, doggy style, pony style, you effing name it. Don't get it twisted, this movie is jam-packed with S-E-X.
But it wasn't the sex that got me lathered—it was the transparency. The film's protagonist Joe, played by Charlotte Gainsbourg in present day and British newcomer Stacy Martin in flashbacks, is trying to convince new acquaintance Seligman (Stellan Skarsgård) that she's lived a life of reprehensible sin. And as she recalls her indiscretions—including the most hilarious, Vaudevillian scene in which Uma Thurman leads her three young children to the "whoring bed" where Joe seduced her husband—the lead, a WOMAN, doesn't shy away from expressing herself. Whether we see her indulging in what she calls "the sensation" with another sexually curious pre-teen, falling for the first asshole (LaBeouf) who treats her poorly, or getting aroused at her father's deathbed, she tells it like it is. There's no pretense, no "I woke up like this" façade, and no way I couldn't feel something—something visceral—watching her careen through life as carelessly as Frank the Tank at a little kid's birthday party.
My passion for shocking movies is nothing new. I have been known to casually screen Darren Aronofsky's Requiem for a Dream before a night of beer drinking; I connected so intensely withThirteen that I thought it had been written for me; I absolutely love von Trier's Melancholia. Any movie that features drug or alcohol abuse—The Spectacular Now, Traffic, Blue Jasmine, The Wolf of Wall Street, Flight, Dallas Buyers Club, Lord of War, heck, Country Strong—gets an emphatic two thumbs up from me.
It's not that I like to watch people screw up their lives; I like to watch people living them.
I am sick of filmmakers trying to keep up with the times. If I wanted to watch a group of friends craft a sext, I'd just go to The Jane on a Friday night. I simply prefer to not watch movies about people who are constantly checking their phones—or their makeup. And if that's because the lead is engaged in an all-night coke binge or, in Joe's case, scheduling eight back-to-back slam sessions, at least she's practicing what the Spanish call libre albedrío, or in the layman's language, free will. In a society full of mirroring types—those whose shticks are derived from the behavior they often see associated with the well-adjusted—I thrive on seeing characters, especially women, who not only break, but shatter the mold into smithereens. (The type of smithereens a well adjusted type might tell you not to clean up with your hands.)
And while the arguments about von Trier's supposed misogyny (and outcries over the lewd content) will most likely overpower this project like it did last year's incendiary Blue Is the Warmest Color, I’d like the record to state that I found Nymphomaniac to be empowering. A woman has the right to do whatever she wants to with her life—and to have sex with whomever she pleases. We say things like that until we are blue in the face, but no one does it, and furthermore, no one actually believes it. And while I haven't seen the second half yet, so I don't know if Joe's self-loathing is temporary or permanent, I hope she snaps out of it. Guys like Keith Richards, Pete Doherty, Jack Kerouac, Joaquin Phoenix, Hunter S. Thompson, and Johnny Depp made their careers on being free-wheeling, yet our favorite women have effortless street style or hair "that falls perfectly without her trying?" For real?
Until modern media glorifies the risk-taking, messy, devil-may-care woman, I'll get mine, in its purest form, at the movies.
Hell, all adventurous women are doing it.
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