“Oh Lars, that was intense.” Those were the words famously muttered by a mortified Kirsten Dunst after his infamous 2011 Cannes press conference, though I imagine many will say something similar after viewing the trailer the Danish provocateur dropped today for “Nymphomaniac.” And the bomb-like implications of the verb “dropped” are fully applicable here: a brief but direct close-up of a plucked vagina sets the tone for a two-minute taster that was plainly calculated to generate maximum chatter about the all-star sex epic, and is already doing its job admirably.
What follows is a barely decipherable but undeniably compelling barrage of erotic imagery, including a handful of intercourse scenes and the sight of Jamie Bell channelling his inner S&M master. My, how Billy Elliot has grown up. I wasn’t planning to watch any footage of the film prior to its eventual release, but the hype got to me — so job done, I guess. Somewhere underneath all the attention-baiting, there’s a real movie, and elements of the trailer suggest it might be a pretty good one, with the ever-fearless Charlotte Gainsbourg (the only actress to have gone in for three rounds with von Trier, as it were) looking on typically nervy form.
A good day all round for von Trier, then, with Cannes Film Festival director Thierry Fremaux having just announced that the fest will welcome the onetime persona non grata back with open arms when he next has a film ready for them — as if anyone ever thought that “ban” would stick. Perhaps he got an early look at this trailer.
Check it out — bearing in mind that it’s thoroughly NSFW, NSFC and NSF-lots of things — and tell us what you think. Will you be submitting to “Nymphomaniac” when it opens next year, or have you seen enough?