WARNING: The following clip contains nudity and is NSFW.
Lars Von Trier's Nymphomaniac will make a demented gift for anyone in Denmark who dares to see it on its Christmas day debut. But the polarizing filmmaker behind this hard-core sex drama has been teasing out what is to come with a new clip every month, one from each of eight chapters. The latest of these was shared by Vulture, and features a section of "Chapter 6: The Eastern and Western Church (The Silent Duck)." What that title means remains a mystery, as the clip above features the beginning of a kinky sex game between Charlotte Gainsbourg and Billy Elliot star Jamie Bell. He's all grown up and ready to dominate.
Written and directed by von Trier, Nymphomaniac centers on a self-admitted sex addict named Joe (Gainsbourg), who shares the raunchy exploits of her life with a Good Samaritan who plucked her beaten body off the street. Unfolding glimpses of one chapter after another, von Trier has been throwing out puzzle pieces to those of us following the film. And below we'll make sense of what we've seen so far as best we can.
The clip up top features the grown Joe with K (Bell), who she clearly shares in a sado-masochistic relationship with. Here he kindly presents her with a present, and wishes her a Happy Christmas. Perhaps less kind is the pet name he's given her: Fido. Nonetheless, Joe plays along albeit reluctantly. Picking up what appears to be a lash with her nickname scratched on it. She then prepares herself, pulling up her dress and leaning over a chair for the spanking we know is coming, thanks to the film's shocking first trailer that took NSFW to an all-new level.
But how did Joe get here? Her life as a nymphomaniac began as a girl, making a game of sexual conquest on a train. You can get a taste of this chapter, called "The Compleat Angler." Here young Joe (Stacy Martin) and her buddy B (Sophie Kennedy Clark) compete for a bag of chocolates by seeing who can land the most hook-ups in their journey.
In the second chapter, Shia LaBeouf entered the scene as the titular "Jerome." From the aforementioned trailer, we learned that the train game only included oral sex, and so Joe still saw herself as a virgin. But when she met Jerome, she met a man she'd hoped would strip her of that status. In this clip, you see their meeting, which is more peppered with awkward office banter than sexual chemistry. Of course, we don't know what happens after the elevator stopped.
By chapter three, it appears Joe has moved on from Jerome, but not exactly to greener pastures. While the first two clips reveled the moments leading up to sex, the third titled "Mrs. H" dealt with the grim repercussion of sleeping with a married man. Here young Joe must confront the wife (Uma Thurman) whose marital bed she defiled with Mr. H (Hugo Speer). "Let's go see Daddy's favorite place," she tells her young sons as she takes them into the bedroom to see "the whoring bed" all while Joe looks on mute. This clip ends on a strange note that suggests we are on a countdown to hysterics.
Surprisingly, the clip from "Chapter 4: Delirium" seems to switch perspective, moving from Joe to Seligman (Stellan Skarsgard), the Good Samaritan who listens to her tale. The clip itself has a cryptic line from Edgar Allan Poe playing over footage of a young woman walking alone in a dark night through an urban environment. What does it mean? Our best guess is a chapter about voyeurism, the kink of watching.
Then just last month came a look into "Chapter 5: The Little Organ School." And at last, von Trier stopped playing coy with these clips, and showed us some of the sex he'd long been promising. This clip is NSFW, showcasing images of young Joe fully engaged with multiple partners in various configurations.
Magnolia Pictures will be unveiling Nymphomaniac stateside. No release date has yet been announced. But if we take the clips as a clue, we could be seeing it as soon as February. In the meantime, look for January to bring a clip from "Chapter 7: The Mirror," and February to unfurl presumably the final clip from "Chapter 8: The Gun."
