It features of a lot of what looks like actual sex (although we are told in the end credits that the penetrative sex depicted was done by body doubles), and while it is obviously interested in sex, it is more interested in how we talk about sex, how we incorporate it into our identity (or don't). It's outrageous and provocative, intellectual and primal at sometimes the same time.

The best part of Lars von Trier's fascinating, engaging and often didactic 'Nymphomaniac' is that, despite the sometimes-grim tone and bleak color palate, it's an extremely funny film, playful, even. Unlike a sneeze, sex carries lifetimes of associations with it, and yet naked writhing bodies onscreen often flatten out into a general cliche representing a hazy idea of the act. It's like getting philosophical about a sneeze. We all may do it, but how do you put it onscreen in a way that is representative of the mess/humor/actuality of it? How do you represent sex and also incorporate emotion? Human beings are often very silly about sex, especially when they get too philosophical about it. Sex may be 'natural' and 'good' (according to George Michael), but seeing sex onscreen (either actual or simulated) is often a game-changer.

The poster was eye-catching and funny, private and exhibitionistic at the same time. The first poster released for Lars von Trier's 'Nymphomaniac' had a Brady-Bunch structure, with images of all the main actors stacked on top of one another, each individual lost in the exact moment of sexual climax.

Imovie review 2018