After the release of ‘Melancholia’ in 2011, director Lars von Trier was banned from the Cannes Film Festival due to controversial remarks about Adolf Hitler and Albert Speer. However, in 2014 he returned to the public eye with ‘Nymphomaniac’, an ambitious exploration of female psychology from a sexual perspective.
The film presents the life story of a nymphomaniac from age 5 to 50, with the adult version portrayed by renowned French actress Charlotte Gainsbourg. Below are some curious facts about the film’s production.
1. The End of a Trilogy
Nymphomaniac became the final part of Lars von Trier’s “Depression Trilogy,” following Antichrist (2009) and Melancholia (2011).
2. Two Films?
Initially, the project was supposed to have two completely different versions: one with explicit sexual scenes and one without them. In the end, the director and producers decided on a single version divided into two volumes due to the large amount of material.
3. Casting
Nicole Kidman was the first actress considered for the main role. This would have been her second collaboration with von Trier after Dogville. Charlotte Gainsbourg later stated that the director told her during a dinner in Cannes in 2011 that he wanted to make a porn film with her in the lead role, but she was unsure whether he was serious.
4. Filming Locations
Production took place from August 28 to November 9 in Germany and Belgium. It took the crew three months to find sets and organize the logistics of special effects in order to film explicit scenes with actors who were only pretending.
5. Explicit Sexual Content
As in The Idiots (1997) and Antichrist (2009), von Trier filmed explicit sex scenes. According to cinematographer Manuel Alberto Claro, many shots were achieved through compositing, but a wide range of highly realistic prosthetic genitalia — both male and female — allowed many scenes to be filmed “directly”. For example, the fellatio scene between Jean-Marc Barr and Charlotte Gainsbourg in Volume II used prosthetics.
6. Porn Actors
The team often filmed explicit scenes with actors in underwear or with professional porn performers. These performers occasionally shared useful advice from their experience on how bodies should move to work better with the camera. Their presence helped create a relaxed atmosphere despite the numerous X-rated scenes. Interestingly, the most difficult moments were not the sex scenes themselves, but the sequences in which characters had to talk to each other while fully nude, which made the work more uncomfortable.
7. Filming Techniques
One scene required the audience to see the male character gradually become aroused while the female character recounted a story involving pedophilia. This moment had to be filmed in reverse order, because even a professional porn double could not perform this progression naturally in front of a camera surrounded by around thirty people. Another technique used for all sexual scenes was filming at 50 frames per second. This gave von Trier more flexibility during editing and allowed him to create perfect rhythm and continuity between shots of actors and body doubles.
8. Trailer for Children
The trailer for Nymphomaniac, which contained sexually explicit material, was accidentally shown in a movie theater before a screening of the children’s animated short Frozen: Olaf’s Frozen Adventure in Tampa, USA.
9. The Director Did Not View the Final Cut
For the first time in his career, von Trier refused to edit the final version of his own film and allowed others to shorten his highly anticipated two-part sexual epic. Producer Peter Aalbæk Jensen explained that the shorter version was released against the director’s wishes, but he accepted it due to market realities. Investors were unwilling to support a film over five and a half hours long with a budget exceeding 60 million Danish kroner (about 11 million USD). Jensen also stated that von Trier did not watch the shortened version before its worldwide release.
10. Full Version Premiere
The complete five-and-a-half-hour version of Nymphomaniac premiered in February 2014 at the Berlin International Film Festival.
