Amy NicholsonShia LaBeouf was so eager to be in Lars Von Trier's Nymphomaniac that he convinced his girlfriend to shoot a sex tape with him as his XXX audition. Was it worth it?
Yes.
Or at least it appears to be, from Nymphomaniac's very NSFW trailer released today. The new film by Von Trier, the uncompromising Danish auteur who once ended a movie by hanging Bjork, promises to be both insanely erotic and erotically insane. The trailer — a mash-up of yellow-hued Instagram-looking retro porn (with taxidermy!) and bleak, modern shots of star Charlotte Gainsbourg beaten up — manages to titillate and exhaust viewers in under two minutes. That Rammstein soundtrack! That half-second full frontal splice of a shaved vulva! Those naughty parentheses in the title!
Now imagine the final film, which is rumored to be four hours long — so long that it's likely going to be released next year as two movies. Earlier, Von Trier said he intended to also make two versions of those two movies — an NC-17 and an R — but this provocative trailer suggests he might just be effing going for it.
To whet appetites, Von Trier has been releasing minute-long clips on YouTube that he's been calling “appetizers.” (So far only one has been pulled for violating YouTube's terms of service.) I'd love to know what Steven Spielberg thinks of his Tintin popping up to whack Gainsbourg's ass with a riding crop. For now, I'd just settle for a clearer look at what Christian Slater's doing in Nymphomaniac than the quick black-and-white glimpse of him lying in bed as a drop of man juice runs down a naked girl's legs. Now that's a bold comeback.
With an NC-17 cut looking like a given, how naughty is Nymphomaniac going to get? Will we actually see Slater have sex? Actually, kinda. Von Trier shot his mainstream actors faux-humping, then shot the scenes again with porn performers. He claims that for the final cut, he's digitally sewn their bodies together so we can't tell where Uma Thurman ends and Uma Thurman's stunt vagina begins. Live in Denmark? You'll get to buy a ticket to Nymphomaniac on Christmas Day. As for the rest of us, here's a teasing poster of Stellan Skarsgård to tide you over.
The “orgasm face” publicity images released for the film in October caused a stir, too. See them all on the next page.[
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