Apocalyptic finale of Melancholy showed that after the cataclysm there comes new life. At least for its author. The planets collided ad nobody survived. Except von Trier who was left alone in the world. For him there are two entities: the world and Me. And one is capable of creating the other. In von Trier’s case, the world always draws the shorter straw. But length (of film) is very important to him and he agreed to do with Nymphomaniac what Tarantino did with Kill Bill. Similar to Tarantino who interrupts the revenge campaign of the Bride and continues it in Kill Bill 2, when she kills off all the remaining characters on her list, von Trier interrupts Joe’s campaign that continues in Nymphomaniac 2. They are brought together by the actress Uma Thurman who now portrays a washed-out wife of Joe’s ex-lover. But after seeing the first part of the Nymphomaniac we experienced sort of a coitus interruptus. Intercourse was interrupted and it may continue in the second part.

Integral version of Nymphomaniac last 5 and a half hours and it was shown in Berlinale. According to the information in its press book, von Trier made an utterly pragmatic decision when he split it into two shorter films in order to 'create cohesion between different distributing strategies'. It all remains merely a wise marketing trick in order to create hype by a series of posters showing the main actors experiencing orgasms and a conceptual teaser, even though, according to the producer Louise Vesth 'most explicit scenes of genitals in close-up were cut from the final version’. Nevertheless, most surprising in von Trier’s film is the mocking creative procedure often on the edge of ironic teasing. However, this is good news because until now the director had a much more serious and pompous relationship to explicit frontal nudity, not counting the crazy Idiots. Nymphomania or “sexual addiction”, as the psychotherapist refers to it in the film, which separates Joe from the world, reflects not only in her loneliness but also in the loneliness and misanthropy of the author himself.

What we saw in the first part in which Joe, while sipping tea, opens up the detailed catalogue of her lovers in front of her savior Seligman ('It will be a long and moral confession', she states) was a ballad about the lost paradise of childhood and puberty, which was the time when the first traces of power and destruction occurred (Jerome is the one who approaches sex in the same mechanical manner as he has towards his motorbike). Sex is raw but shot from a certain distance, somewhere between malice and mockery, but far away from the “shocking” pagan looseness that was announced in the media. It is reduced to a play of collage, association, rejection and ironical multiplication (Stacy Martin who portrays Joe as a teenager is simply stunning in her surreal beauty). However, even when the author’s Me wins, the world that he faces is completely abstract, cold and mysterious.

'The erotic is about saying yes', says Joe in the film. Even so, Charlotte Gainsbourg gives von Trier’s genesis a completely new dimension. She is no longer a prisoner of her martyrdom, but her character has something emotional, whether she dives out the fog (Antichrist), bathes in moonlight (Melancholy) or enters the vortex of Eros (Nymphomaniac). Through Gainsbourg von Trier’s narcissistic Me gains a metaphysical dimension. Even though in the earliest levitating time he forces her to accept her own sexuality as the only means of communication with the Other, she burns cars with Molotov cocktails, visits therapeutic sessions for sex addicts, takes part in sex sessions with well-hung Africans and engages in S&M experiments, from which some come close to comical and burlesque scenes. But Joe is stronger than the film. Even though there is something negative in that strength. Therefore in the end Trier forces her to lay down her arms, turn off the light and in the darkness of the film shot embrace Hendrix. Hey Joe, where you goin' with that gun in your hand? (Dragan Rubeša)