Starring: Charlotte Gainsbourg, Stellan Skarsgård, Stacy Martin, Christian Slater, Uma Thurman, Shia LaBeouf, Willem Dafoe, Jamie Bell

Directed by: Lars von Trier

Genre: Erotic epic

Choice Quote: “All I wanted to say is, if you’ve got wings, why not fly?”

The Hype: Lars von Trier’s much-hyped four-hour sex-epic (sexpic?) is the story of a confessed nymphomaniac’s lifelong erotic journey. Not to be confused with “a young girl’s strange, erotic journey from Milan to Minsk.”

The Reality: This is what you call “tantric cinema” – four hours of unadulterated, unsimulated sex. Of course, much like last year’s similarly explicit Blue Is the Warmest Color, and many of von Trier’s past offerings, these films are about more than just the sex.

Yes, there’s a plot in there too, one that revolves around 50-year-old Joe (Gainsbourg) who begins the film beaten and left for dead in an alley. A middle-aged man called Seligman (Skarsgård) finds her and brings her to his flat. Once there, she tells him of her life as a nymphomaniac, with Seligman cutting in every once in a while with a metaphor about fly fishing or a quote from some medieval literary text.

By Mike Crisolago. To read more, please click here.