Film review: addicted to love in Nymphomaniac: Volume 1

Lars von Trier is best known for works such as Breaking the Waves and Dancer in the Dark (both winners of major prizes at Cannes). Less well known is that the Danish director and writer has also produced porn films - such as HotMen CoolBoyz - through the Puzzy Power division of his Zentropa company that's also behind his latest controversial work.

Its title and pedigree pretty much guarantees that Von Trier's Nymphomaniac will possess boundary-challenging sex scenes featuring full frontal nudity. Probably less expected though is that there is also a lot of dialogue-filled segments in this decades-spanning drama about a woman who's led an incredibly active sex life.

The film makes use of extended conversations about various episodes in the titular character's life to introduce certain narrative themes and creatively connect them to subjects as wide-ranging as fishing, classical music and 19th century American writer Edgar Allan Poe's delirium.

Because the film's main female character had such a high number of sexual partners and due to her telling her outrageous story in detail, it makes sense that Nymphomaniac would end up being on the lengthy side. So even while the abridged version of the film that's reached Hong Kong's shores is one and half hours shorter than Von Trier's preferred version, it's still lengthy enough to merit being split into two parts.

Early on in Nymphomaniac: Volume I, Seligman (Stellan Skarsgård) stumbles upon a bloodied woman in an alley. Joe (Charlotte Gainsbourg) tells him not to call for an ambulance or the police but agrees to go back with him to his spartan home where he offers her a bed to rest in. After a bit of encouragement, she opens up and proceeds to tell the sympathetic stranger with a monk-like aura her story.