Nymphomaniac

I like Melancholia and I remember really liking Dancer in the Dark 10 years ago. It's tough to accept Melancholia's two siblings are slogs. Not that Nymphomaniac is as brooding and grotesque as Antichrist -- in fact, it's almost light-hearted, for the 1:15 I watched -- but it's dull. The dialogue sounds like it's trying to be witty and philosophical, with its dry punchiness and its fishing metaphors, but neither the humor nor the philosophy sticks the landing; both turn out more pretentious than interesting. The story isn't thrilling either -- it's a woman recounting her development as a nymphomaniac, which is an auspicious premise if you can say anything beyond the obvious self-indulgence, but the movie hasn't gotten there. There was a very lengthy scene illustrating the impact the protagonist had on a family she was coldly mistressing; but the length felt more like an artistic miss than a deliberate hammering-home of a point. That's when I turned it off for the night. There was nothing enjoyable or captivating about that long scene for me.

There's still a lot of Nymphomaniac left: 45 minutes of this volume, and then a whole other volume. But this is such a shaky foundation, I don't feel like continuing. I know von Trier is self-indulgent, I know he can be pessimistic... I'm not sure I need all that. Dancer and Melancholia had superficially pessimistic endings, but they were actually really satisfying and devastating. I don't trust Nymphomaniac to find that chord, since there are no hints of it so far, like there would have been in those two movies.