Nymphomaniac: Vol. I

Lars von Trier gives this volume the first five of eight chapters: The Compleat Angler, Jerôme, Mrs. H, Delirium and The Little Organ School. Producer Louise Vesth calls the two volumes really one film; nothing closes here. Seligman’s interruptions are the skeleton, not decoration. He reads the three and five Joe counts as the Fibonacci sequence; in the Bach chapter three lovers are laid out like the voices of a three part organ piece. The account never gathers speed; every rise is cut off. How the explicit scenes were made is documented. Vesth says the actors mimed while adult film performers doubled the real sex, and the images were digitally combined: star above the waist, double below. Stacy Martin plays young Joe in her first film. Shooting took place in Cologne and Hilden in Germany and Ghent in Belgium. Von Trier’s complete version of both volumes runs about 5.5 hours. The cinema release was cut to about 4 hours; von Trier did not work on that shortening but approved it afterwards. A good fit if you treat Joe’s account being broken by Seligman’s angling and arithmetic as method rather than fault, and start knowing volume two comes with it. Not for you if you would rather explicit sex were not the subject, or expect this first half to resolve.