Nymphomaniac Vol. I & II (Lars von Trier, 2013)

6.5/10
Nymphomaniac is less a coherent film and more a lengthy therapy session by and for its creator, Lars von Trier, as he tries, as he did in Antichrist, to pin down and figure out the fairer sex. In a 4+ hour movie, this goes in a lot of directions. Sometimes the experiences of the central female Joe are funny, sometimes erotic, sometimes hideous, sometimes silly, sometimes mundane, and everything else in between. What's disappointing about Nymphomaniac is that it's essentially what it promises on the tin - when I imagined a long movie by this title from this director starring Charlotte Gainsbourg, it wasn't worlds away from what I ended up getting. Both of von Trier's last two movies, Antichrist and Melancholia, were extremely unique. Nymphomaniac feels considerably less so, to the point of even quoting a scene from Antichrist directly.
In the end I feel like this was more of an "exploration" of female sexuality and addiction than any kind of real definitive statement. You get some glimpses of von Trier's honest opinions (male/female double standards) but it's clear he's also just as happy to be the provocateur (its main character's unsettling sympathy towards pedophiles, a misanthropic but painfully predictable ending). I thought the movie had an interesting, kind of built-in "anti-reflex" to any accusations of misogyny, as to accuse the film and the actions and desires of its female lead of being misogynyst, would, in fact, be misogynyst in itself. If it were a man as the lead instead, no one would accuse it of being misandrist. So why should the reverse be true? So I did enjoy that aspect, and that kind of way it made, I think, an empowering point about women.
I'm modestly curious about the unedited version that's supposed to be released later, but I probably won't rush to see it. If these two pared down parts are messy and scattershot, the long version is probably even more so.