In the alley in front of his tenement building, ageing bachelor Seligman finds a young woman covered in blood. He takes her to his apartment where Joe tells him about her life, her experiences with men and her insatiable appetite for sex. She first learns about the physiology of the female body from reading her doctor father’s medical books. Although not yet an adult, she and a girlfriend embark on a round of sexual escapades, seducing men in flats, train compartments, bars and offices. Jerôme, with whom she has a child, is the one constant in her life. But her happiness is fragile.
After Antichrist (2009) and Melancholia (2011), Nymphomaniac marks the third and final episode of Lars von Trier’s ‘trilogy of depression’. His portrait of the confessions of a woman struggling with her own biography reflects the search for meaning and balance in our lives. This two-part cinematic coming-of-age story, depicting the central character’s arousal and despair, pain and lust, makes a welter of literary references: from the Bible to the Arabian Nights, from the Decameron to the Marquis de Sade. The Berlinale screening represents the world premiere of the director’s cut of Part I.