Nymphomaniac: Volume II

Magnolia Pictures | Release Date: April 4, 2014

6.5	USER SCORE Generally favorable reviews based on 163 Ratings

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The3AcademySinsMar 6, 2019

Stupid, pointless, plodding trash. Easily the worst film by Lars Von Trier. It's lazy, indecipherable, and it amps up all of the problems the first installment had. Did they just replace Shia LaBeouf because they realized the actor who playedStupid, pointless, plodding trash. Easily the worst film by Lars Von Trier. It's lazy, indecipherable, and it amps up all of the problems the first installment had. Did they just replace Shia LaBeouf because they realized the actor who played young Charlotte Gainsbourgh looked nothing like her, and they changed Shia to make it look purposeful at the last second? The dialogues and character motivations suck. Von Trier's ego kind of took the reigns here, and it shows. The ending makes no sense, and worse, it desecrates both Antichrist and Melancholia. The movie is nice to look at though.… Expand

2 of 2 users found this helpful20

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elitepredetor99Aug 1, 2017

Let me start off this review by expressing how **** annoying the movies main characters were, both the mentally ill women and that old man pissed me off till no end.this mentally ill piece of **** women explains in chapters through out volumeLet me start off this review by expressing how **** annoying the movies main characters were, both the mentally ill women and that old man pissed me off till no end.this mentally ill piece of **** women explains in chapters through out volume I&II how she has **** up so many people's life selfishly and without remorse, while she explains this it annoys the viewer seeing how much of a piece of **** selfish person she is. After each chapter after she is done explaining how she destroyed someones life this **** retarded old piece of **** man keeps emphasising with her and telling her how she was innocent and right even though, she left her husband and children for some **** up weird fetish, how she ruined a strangers marriage for sex and her own pleasure, and so on. But this **** old man won't stop emphasising with her which annoyed me soon much that I felt like breaking my screen, I don't know who was more annoying this piece of **** women who destroyed so much lives just for sex and pleasure or this piece of **** old man who should of died long ago. All this old **** does is emphases and relate that whores sins to fishes and other bull**** things like a stain on the wall … Expand

1 of 3 users found this helpful12

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FRanti01May 10, 2014

Un simple film pornographique du style Emmanuelle dont le but est de provoqué/déranger comme tout les film de ce réalisateur .
Les "vrai" acteurs étant doublé par des acteurs pornographique pour les tres nombreuses scenes de sexes , autantUn simple film pornographique du style Emmanuelle dont le but est de provoqué/déranger comme tout les film de ce réalisateur .
Les "vrai" acteurs étant doublé par des acteurs pornographique pour les tres nombreuses scenes de sexes , autant allé voir directement un vrai film pornographique .
Notons au passage , que les enfants de Charlotte Gainsbourg on été insulté/chahuté par leur camarade d'école et traumatisé à la sortie de ce film ....… Expand

0 of 3 users found this helpful03

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TokyochuchuJan 6, 2017

Nymphomaniac vol 1 was an uneven but entertaining film. Vol 2, however, is completely awful. Character motivations don't make sense at all and the acting gets even wonkier. And the ending is just... Awful. The first part clawed it's way toNymphomaniac vol 1 was an uneven but entertaining film. Vol 2, however, is completely awful. Character motivations don't make sense at all and the acting gets even wonkier. And the ending is just... Awful. The first part clawed it's way to enjoyable mediocrity. The second part is just flat-out crap.… Expand

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

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cmacSep 11, 2017

Lars is a woman hater. From Breaking the Waves to Nymphomaniac he likes to see women being hurt by having sex. When is the last time you saw a man being raped to death in one of his films?
Misogynist.

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arciniegasApr 11, 2014

A woman with a thousand-yard stare looks out the window and introduces the next vignette with a goofy text delivered at glacial speed: "...and so, I became aware of my own feelings... my own body... my own...sex."

A passive sidekick, whomA woman with a thousand-yard stare looks out the window and introduces the next vignette with a goofy text delivered at glacial speed: "...and so, I became aware of my own feelings... my own body... my own...sex."

A passive sidekick, whom you suspect --because of the universal laws of porn-- will have a sex scene with her at some point, answers "I understand, Emanuelle, tell me more..." Cue music and Flashback. Rinse and repeat. Ad nauseum.

This is the traditional territory of movies like "Emannuelle in space" and other cinemax after dark gems, and also of Nymph()maniac, Lars Von Trier's weakest effort to date.

A key difference with "Emanuelle" (or given the boorish masochism "Ilsa the She-wolf of the SS,") is that Nymph()maniac doesn't need to stand on it's own merit as a movie, naked at 12:45 a.m. in Cinemax. On the contrary, Nymph()maniac has the benefit of an invisible imperial cloack (similar to Tarantino's, but more European) to cover itself: if something is cheesy, broken, or plain nonsensical, it can always be protected by the standard excuse: "you don't go to a von trier film for the story! you go for the provocation and to see the mind of the auteur."

And if apologies from the public are not convincing, Lars himself will tell you directly in the movie: "ok, I know it's not good, but how will you get more of my story? by believing it or not?"

The brute narrative structure is the first hint of the poverty ahead: Nymph()maniac, will leave astute viewers with the impression somebody is **** or bullying them, trying to sell something rather pedestrian as high art,something borrowed as something original, something conventional as taboo, and a copy of the von trier of old as the real thing.

The movie, a rehash of everything the author has done better elsewhere, is a good opportunity to review the standard conversation around him, in which the word "provocation" is usually front and center.

Provocation in Von Trier's terms means something like this: "put yourself through unpleasantness, disgust, or worse, boredom, and in return I shall provoke you with brutal insight and challenge your assumptions." Lets call this the Von Trier Bargain.

The Von Trier bargain works well when dealing with form and pessimistic tone: doing away with sets in Dogville, and sticking to handheld camera work in Dogme, did provide interesting ground for thought about Cinema and pushed the conversation about what a movie actually is and means.

The Von Trier bargain doesn't work so well when dealing with content. The man is not an intellectual, just a tortured soul.

When Von Trier tries the bargain with words and ideas instead of images the outcome is pedestrian. Digressions around the first few terms of the Fibonacci sequence, for example, might be very amusing to him, but are shallow and incoherent to a public that actually know what the series are. That sort of disjoint shouts at "cleverness" has the same DNA as the rants of a disturbed person in a street corner; or his own rants at Cannes.

Other examples of the bargain gone wrong abound in the movie: the botched transition of genres and roles, where Gainsbourgh becomes a mafia figure thanks to her "special powers" is risible. A mere excuse to have the pederast scene, which again feels more like an explanation about Cannes and other faux-pas than an insight into perversion. The attempt at list-movie making in the style of Greenaway, and the discourse on violence in the style of Haneke, all fall short here. They fall short both because the underlying insight is weaker and of the shock value is higher. It comes out as needy.

Needy here is a key word. A key masochistic word. there is a palpable self-consciousness in trying to make it shocking, trying to make it more "Von-trier" that ends up in a mess of apologies, starting with the two-part split and the opening credits promising a more hardcore version. One can almost hear Von Trier begging: "I promise it will be shocking enough! give me another 2 hours. I'll make her bleed!"

Not even the great Gainsbourgh, who is truly a soldier of Cinema, or the movie-stealing Uma Thurman can save this mess. For every Uma thurman minute, there are ten empty and weak minutes of pornographic rehash, such as the suicidal baby from Antichrist saved at the last minute by the supremely miscast Shia LaBeouf.

Despite all the attempts at framing it in terms of provocation vs. bourgeois values, this movie has more in common with bang bros. and sophomores trying to be clever, than with the masterpieces of erotic provocation like "Personna," "The Piano Teacher," or "The Pillow Book."

To put it shortly, Nymp()maniac is not the sum of Von Trier's life-long preoccupation and themes, it is a cacophony and a rehash of previous work repackaged in weak structure and shallow references.

This movie is not really about a nymphomaniac out of orgasms as much as it is about a masochistic man out of ideas.… Expand

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