Nymphomaniac Volumes 1 & 2 - Extended Director's Cut

When Lars von Trier's occasionally pornographic "Nymphomaniac" was released earlier this year - believe it or not - it was nothing more than a work-in-progress. Rumor has it that Trier never even bothered to watch that initial version, which ran four hours across two volumes. Instead, Trier continued to work on his "director's cut" of the film, which is now out on Blu-ray, and is roughly five-and-a-half hours long.

The structure remains the same: The film is still separated into eight chapters, which are then separated into two volumes. And it still concerns Joe (Charlotte Gainsbourg,) a sex addict relating stories from the first 50 years of her life to Seligman (Stellan Skaarsgaard,) a virginal intellectual. The film hasn't been changed radically, but with the additional length it becomes more ambitious, and funnier, and filthier.

Despite earlier claims that the shorter version was not edited to elide explicit content, much of the 90 minutes added to this latest release consist of shots and sequences far more "hardcore" than anything included in the prior release. For instance: In the initial version, a scene where Joe attempts to have a threesome with two non-English-speaking African men ended with her leaving, unfulfilled, her words lost in translation. The extended scene allows the scene to play out in full, with the threesome actually happening for a while - in full view of the camera's frame - before Joe walks out.

Much of the added footage is similar: Explicit sex sequences that existed in the original cut, with less ellipses and elisions. (For instance, Chapter 6 - where Joe becomes a masochist for a while, consensually withstanding beatings from a sadist played by Jamie Bell - is extended considerably,) However, there is one major addition disconnected from the scenes in the prior release: A 20-minute-long abortion sequence, where Joe performs the operation on herself, and with a coat hanger. The abject horror of the sequence - which even the performatively unflappable Seligman objects to - allows Trier to further engage with the film's primary thematic interest: The dialectic clash between the taboo and the socially accepted, between storytellers without limits and listeners defined by them, between the senses and the mind.

This latest Blu-ray release of the film doesn't come with many extras, and they're of the same promotional featurette style of the extras included on the first cut of the film. In addition to the trailers, each volume of the film gets its own featurette (for the first part, it details the actors, for the second, it details Trier, and the film's sex scenes.) Trailers are also included, as is a third behind-the-scenes featurette/

So the question becomes: Do the additional 90 minutes make "Nymphomaniac" a demonstrably better film? It's hard to say: Even the abortion sequence merely clarifies the initial film's themes, rather than complicates them. This is undoubtedly the definitive cut of the film, but it strengthens what was already apparent - it's not a radical reshaping. It hasn't been improved, it's been engorged.

"Nymphomaniac: Extended Director's Cut"
Blu-ray (2 Discs)
Magnoliapictures.com
$39.98