Etter en omfattende og mildt sagt effektiv markedsføringskampanje, som gang på gang har ført til mediahysteri, har Lars von Triers episke beretning om den sexavhengige Joe (Charlotte Gainsbourg og Stacy Martin) blitt møtt av et internasjonalt pressekorps. Så hva er konsensus? Nymphomaniac skuffer ikke.

I en gjennomgang på filmbloggen The Playlist, der noen av de mest profilerte kritikernes anmeldelser trekkes frem, ser man at pressen fokuserer vel så mye på de mer intellektuelle aspektene ved Nymphomaniac som den – tidligere mye omtalte – bruken av eksplisitt sex. Kanskje alle rett og slett har fått litt nok etter de unødvendige ramaskrikene rundt sexsekvensen i Blå er den varmeste fargen?

Flere anmeldere bekrefter også at Nymphomaniac ikke bare er en vond film, men at den bærer på en god dose av von Triers absurde og beksvarte humor. I tillegg kommer det frem at filmens stil er i tråd med regissørens tidligere verker, som er mer rufsete, upolert og pønkete enn hans to seneste filmer, Antichrist og Melancholia. (Dette antydet Montages allerede tidligere i høst.)

Her er noen utdrag fra de tidlige anmeldelsene (via The Playlist):

Racy subject aside, the film provides a good-humored yet serious-minded look at sexual self-liberation, thick with references to art, music, religion and literature, even as it pushes the envelope with footage of acts previously relegated to the sphere of pornography. Even so, in this cut of ‘Nymphomaniac,’ the only arousal von Trier intends is of the intellectual variety, making this philosophically rigorous picture a better fit for cinephiles than the raincoat crowd. – Peter Debruge, Variety

(…) it is never boring and does provoke and stimulate, although not as a turn-on, not remotely. At its core the film represents an intellectual male artist’s arduous, wayward, idiocentric, blunt, naughty-boy attempt to address Freud’s famous question, ‘What does a woman want? – Todd McCarthy, The Hollywood Reporter

A fascinating work despite it’s slightly chaotic side with a multitude of occult sub-readings and a few pointless provocations slipped in by Lars von Trier on the topic of his alleged anti-Semitism, ‘Nymphomaniac – Part 1’ is an added proof of the virtuosity of a filmmaker torn between the flesh and the spirit, a great disturbed artist working on the chaotic border between notions of good and evil, a director navigating from German metal band Rammstein to the sound of leaves rustling in the wind. – Fabien Lemercier, Cineuropa

Lars Von Trier’s wild, sprawling ‘Nymphomaniac’ is an orgy of the sublime and the ridiculous…Chaotic and not especially pretty, the film has more of the punkish, radical spirit of Von Trier’s ‘The Idiots’ or ‘Dogville’ than the gloss or contained drama of ‘Melancholia’ or ‘Antichrist’—although the nominal British setting and interest in religion and a promiscuous woman nod to ‘Breaking the Waves’ too. – Dave Calhoun, Time Out London

Hang on to your seat back, your Bible, or the hand of a friend. Lars von Trier’s ‘Nymphomaniac’ bludgeons the body and tenderises the soul. It is perplexing, preposterous and utterly fascinating; a false bill of goods in that it’s a film about sex that is deliberately unsexy and a long, garrulous story (two volumes, four hours) that largely talks to itself. Those naked figures in motion are just a distraction. To blunder in on ‘Nymphomaniac’ is to catch the sight of a middle-aged Dane masturbating alone in a darkened room. – Xan Brooks, The Guardian

Lars von Trier’s latest film, ‘Nymphomaniac’…is nothing less than the director’s bid to make his magnum opus…»Nymphomaniac» is indeed a major work that tries and, to a large extent, succeeds to organically synthesize the world, ideas and filmmaking savvy of von Trier in one sprawling and ambitious cinematic fable. Somewhat shockingly given the subject matter, the most stimulating material in ‘Nymphomaniac’ isn’t the explicit sex but how sexuality is discussed and understood. This being a von Trier film, there’s a good deal of humor, too. The director’s script includes plenty of inventive sexual inquiry, including a monologue that compares the hunt for sex to fly-fishing and a lengthy discussion of how sexual pain compares to the divide between the Western and the Eastern Church. – Boyd Van Hoeij, Indiewire

Det kommer ikke akkurat som noen bombe at Nymphomaniac jevnt over mottar skryt fra kritikerne, men tradisjon tro er det heller ikke overraskende at den panegyriske begeistringen uteblir. Amerikanske og britiske kritikere finner nesten alltid noe å utsette på von Triers filmer – det er enten for plumpt, for langt eller litt for monotont. Sannsynligvis ankommer mottagelsen fra det danske kritikerkorpset om bare få dager, og det blir spennende å se hvor våre gode naboer legger lista. Danskene vet å elske sin egen profet, og selv den skarpt polariserende Antichrist ble møtt med lovprisninger av EkstraBladet & Co.

Nymphomaniac får norsk kinopremiere 24. januar. Her kan du se noen ferske frysbilder fra filmen:

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