3 Best Nymphomaniac Sex Scenes
There was a lot of buzz surrounding Lars Von Trier’s ‘Nymphomaniac’ before it first released, but what else would you expect from a film that was promoted using phrases like “unsimulated sex scenes”, “Digital body doubles” and, well, the title itself. When the trailer of the movie had originally premiered, it went viral for its portrayal of close up sex scenes that no one had ever seen before. And Shia LaBeouf‘s appearance in a film after a long hiatus further increased the hype.
Now there is a very fine line between porn and cinematic sex scenes, or is there? Movies like ‘Nymphomaniac’ cross that line a lot of times but somehow still manage to stay well within it, which makes them look like art and not mainstream porn. But if ‘Nymphomaniac’ has gone so far, how dirty is it? We can’t really give you a well-defined measure on a scale of 1 to 10 but we can tell you that it is quite dirty. Of course, if you compare it with most movies of today, then apart from the volume of sex scenes that it holds, the scenes are not incredibly dirty and stay within the confinements of what one would call art. And being the story of a sex addict, the number of sex scenes it portrays are normal.
There’s no denying that this 4-hour film can make other mainstream adult films like ‘Fifty shades of Grey’ and ‘American Pie’ look like Mary Poppins but then does it really go that far? Most of the buzz created around the movie was about the fact that some of the greatest stars like Uma Thruman, Jamie Bell, and Shia LaBeouf were involved in all the close up unsimulated sex scenes in the film. But this was later dismissed when eventually it was announced that porn doubles were being used for most of these scenes. So what does it come down to? There is no denying that Trier is indeed a very creative filmmaker, even though a lot of times, his experiments tend to go way beyond what is acceptable. But that’s what creativity is all about, right? Defying the common norm and creating something no one has ever seen before.
These scenes have been ranked on the basis of their artistic quality and explicitness. Here’s the list of top steamy scenes from ‘Nymphomaniac’.
Going Beyond (Nymphomaniac II)
To get her sex life back, Joe decides to go beyond what she had been doing and tries something new. She gets in touch with a translator who helps her interact with a black man and eventually asks him if he would be interested in having sex. The black man invites her to a place and he brings his brother along with him. They start off with a threesome — a very graphic scene, I must say (body doubles, for sure) — but mid-way through it, the men start arguing about something and that’s when she decides to leave. This, too, does not change anything for her but it makes her realize that she needs to go beyond what she thinks she is capable of in order to get things back to how they were.
The Numbing, It Stays (Nymphomaniac II)
‘Nymphomaniac II‘ begins exactly where the first one left off as Joe continues to talk to Seligman about her past sexual experiences. She starts off by telling him how her first orgasm was “spiritual” in a way when she was 12 years old. Then she continues where she had ended her story with Jerome. The numbness of her sexual sensations continued and no matter how she tried to bring it back with Jerome, she just couldn’t. There’s a very graphic scene here where she tries to have sex with Jerome but somehow Jerome is not able to keep up with her. He suggests that maybe she should look for other sexual partners outside their marriage in order to “feed the tiger”.
The Ending (Nymphomaniac II)
Sad, depressing, disappointing and yet, unsurprising — all these words very well define the ending of the film. Depressing because by the end when you finally expect to see some hope for Joe, she is again back to her old life of betrayal where she is materialized. Throughout the film, the Seligman we see is the Seligman from Joe’s perspective. He seems like a decent man who only means good with no desire of having sex with her. But what we see in the end is his true identity when he tries to rape her and gets shot. For most people, this ending was rather disappointing because even after investing 4 hours into it, Lars Von in the end just says “SCREW YOU!” to all of our expectations. Even then, considering his previous work, what more could we have expected?