Nymphomaniac Volume I (2014)

2014 | Drama | International

118 mins

1. "The Compleat Angler"
Inspired by a fly fishing hook in the wall behind her and Seligman's love of Izaak Walton's book The Compleat Angler, Joe opens her story by talking about her precocious sexual fascination during her early childhood. Her father (Christian Slater) is a tree-loving doctor whom she adores while her mother (Connie Nielsen) is, as Joe describes her, a "cold bitch". In adolescence (Stacy Martin), she loses her virginity to an arbitrary young man named Jerôme (Shia LaBeouf). This first encounter, which ends with Jerôme casually leaving her to fix his moped, leaves her disappointed, while Seligman observes that the combination of the number of times Jerôme penetrated her, three times vaginally and five times anally, resembles the Fibonacci sequence.

Several years later, Joe engages in a contest with her friend B (Sophie Kennedy Clark) during a train journey; whichever of the two women has sex with the most passengers by the train's arrival at the station wins a bag of chocolate sweets. After having sex in the toilet with several of the men she comes across, Joe wins by performing a blowjob on a passenger in a first class car, S (Jens Albinus). S is a married man who resists both her and B's advances, but ultimately Joe forces herself on him. Joe tells Seligman her encounter with S is the first of many terrible things she's done, but he waves off her accusation.

2. "Jerôme"
Over rugelach and a discussion over the lack of masculinity in men using cake forks to eat pastry, Joe talks about her first experiences with actual love, something she dismisses as "lust with jealousy added." Joe takes on more lovers as she, B, and several friends create a club, "The Little Flock", dedicated to liberating themselves from society's fixation on love. Joe eventually leaves after all the other members end up developing serious attachments to their conquests. As a young adult, Joe drops out of medical school and finds work as a secretary at a printing company. Her first employer is none other than Jerôme. While sexual intentions are clearly on his mind, she finds herself avoiding his advances and sleeping with other co-workers, frustrating him. When Joe finally realizes she has developed feelings for Jerôme, she writes him a letter. However, she is too late as he has left along with his uncle's jealous secretary Liz (Felicity Gilbert), who was fully aware of Joe's feelings. She is immediately fired by his uncle (Jesper Christensen), the actual owner of the company, for her lack of experience and goes back to indulging her nymphomania, despite a yearning for Jerôme.

3. "Mrs. H"
On one occasion with one of her lovers, H (Hugo Speer), Joe inadvertently causes conflict that makes him leave his wife for her. The distressed Mrs. H (Uma Thurman) arrives and demonizes both of them in front of her children, though Joe states in the present that this barely affected her. The situation then becomes more awkward as Joe's next lover, A (Cyron Melville), arrives at the house and finds himself in the middle of Mrs. H's mental breakdown. The family finally leaves, but not before Mrs. H verbally lacerates Joe, slaps her now ex-husband and leaves the apartment wailing.

4. "Delirium"
A conversation about Edgar Allan Poe and his death from delirium tremens reminds Joe of the last time she saw her father. She is the only one to visit him in the hospital as he dies of cancer. Joe's father asks her not to slander her mother, who is afraid of hospitals, for not being by his side, explaining they said their goodbyes. Joe is a firsthand witness as her father deteriorates into fits of violent spasms, paranoid delusions and screams for his wife. To take her mind off her father's suffering, Joe has sexual intercourse with several people at the hospital. When he finally dies, Joe becomes sexually aroused, with a drop of vaginal fluid running down her thigh as she stands in front of the body, and becomes numb with depression.

5. "The Little Organ School"
After Seligman explains how he feels Bach perfected polyphony, Joe uses his example to talk about three lovers leading up to her "cantus firmus." The "bass voice", F (Nicolas Bro) is a tender, but predictable man who puts her sexual needs above his own. The "second voice", G (Christian Gade Bjerrum), thrills Joe because of his animalistic control of her in bed. During one of Joe's regular walks in the local park, Jerôme finds her after separating from Liz, a coincidence Seligman finds preposterous, and they embrace. As the two engage in authentically passionate sex — set alongside Joe's experiences with F and G — Joe becomes emotionally distraught when discovering she can no longer "feel anything".