It’s a sad day, folks, as it seems Lars Von Trier has given up final cut on a film for the first time in his career. He turned in a five-hour cut of his full-penetration sex epic (comedy), Nymphomaniac, but it seems some people thought that was going to be a tough sell. The planned five-hour epic will now be broken into two parts to make it easier for audiences to swallow.
In an in-depth article on the making of the film, to be published in Danish cinema magazine Filmmagasinet Ekko on Wednesday (Nov. 13) and provided to The Hollywood Reporter in advance, von Trier’s longtime producer Peter Aalbaek Jensen said the director delivered a 5½-hour cut of the film. But the version that debuts Dec. 25 in Copenhagen for the world premiere will be just four hours — and divided into two two-hour features.
“The short version is against Lars’ own will, but he accepts it because he understands market mechanisms,” Ekko quotes Jensen as saying. “You cannot make a film for more than 60 million kroners (about $11 million) that is so lengthy. Five and a half hour is so extreme that it reduces market value so radically that investors would have felt they had bought a pig in a poke,” Jensen says.
Ekko cites insider information that von Trier hasn’t even seen the shorter version of the film that will be unspooled to Danish and then global audiences.
Meanwhile, the studio has announced a UK release date, March 7th for part one, and March 14th for part two. No word yet on which part features Christian Slater’s oh face so that we might skip it, but more news as it… uh… comes.
Good news though. While the studio has trimmed 90 minutes, it seems none of the sex bits are headed for the cutting room floor. Which is nice, because they just mopped in there.
Jensen says the cuts were purely for commercial reasons and not to eliminate any of the films’ many explicit sex scenes. There were initially plans to release both a hard-core and soft-core version of Nymphomaniac but those plans have now been abandoned. Instead there will be just the hard-core version but distributors in individual countries can decide to blur whichever elements they find unacceptable. The Danish version will go out with all the explicit sex intact and in focus. [THR]
So while this is a sad day for Lars Von Trier, it’s still a great day for those of us who’ve long dreamed of seeing dongs going in. This is great news. And isn’t it just like Europeans to not trim any of the dongs.