Shia LaBeouf famously wore a paper bag on his head at the Berlin International Film Festival premiere of Lars von Trierās āNymphomaniac: Volume Iāā āā but the directorās joke is on audience members expecting a hot time for their 14 bucks (more on VOD).
Itās hard to imagine a less sexy movie about sex than the first part of this epic pseudo-homage to 1970s porn, even if the Danish provocateur hasš» employed sex-organ doubles and digital wizardry to make it appear as if LaBeouf and some of the other sleepwalking actors are actually doing the nasty.
Mostly, itās Joe (Charlotte Gainsbourg) recounting her youthful erotic adventures to Seligman (Stellan Skarsgard), a š«middle-aged professor who finds her bloodied and battered in an alley and takes her to his spartan apartment to recuperate.
Joe, a self-described sex addict, calls herself a bad person while Seligman compares her exploits to fly-fishing ā whšen he isnāt qź¦”uestioning her veracity while sheās explaining rugelach and dessert forks.
The inexpressive Stacy Martin plays Joe as a teenager in the lengthy flashbacks, including one where she seduces a motorcycšølist named Jerome (LaBeouf with a terrible accent that maš y or may not be British).
Later, Joe and a pal named B (Sophie Kennedy š¬Clark) board a train and compete to see who can have sex with the most men.
Joe (still played by Martin ā Gainsbourg stays in bed narrating, at least in āVolume Iā) eventually graduates to juggling a dozen lāovers, in shifts, in her apartment (the entire film is set in no identifiable location, except maybe von Trierās hackneyed imagination).
As in gš¹enuine porn, most of the acting (except for Skarsgard, who deliberately tries to be funny aānd sometimes succeeds) is as flat and uninteresting as the script ā even when the older Joe narrates a montage of flaccid penises.
The movie briefly springs to life, so to speak, when Uma Thurman shows up for a single scene ā which seems like itš belongs in another movie ā as the spurned wife of one of Joeās lovers, who has impulsively decided to move in with her.
Thurmanās character ā the only one with any personality in the entire fiź¦”lm ā has two kids in tow, and tries to shame the blank-faced Joe by asking, āWould it be all right if I show the children the whoring bed?āā
But when sheās gone, itās back to mopey Joe, who has hooked up again with LaBeošufās Jerome ā now her employer ā because she canāt resist āhis careless elegance.āā
LaBeouf, ešlegant? At least heās spared the indignity heaped on Christian Slater, as Joeāź¦s dad, who soils himself (in loving detail) on his deathbed.
Von Trier has made some wonderful movies (āBreaking the Waves,āā āMelancholiaāā) but this pretentious snoozer, like āAntichrist,ā isš nāt one of them. As a piece of European sexploitation, āNymphomaniac: Volume Iāā (Volume II is coming in two weeks) makes āBlue is the Warmest Colorāā look like āGone with the Wš§øindāā by comparison.