Direction: Volume=1: Lars von Trier

Direction: Volume=2: Lars von Trier

Produced: Volume=1: Marie Cecilie Gade

Produced: Volume=2: Louise Vesth, Marie Cecilie Gade,

Written: Volume =1: Lars von Trier

Written: Volume =2: Lars von Trier

Genre: Volume=1 Drama                

Genre: Volume=2 Drama

Duration: Volume =1: 145 Mins

Duration: Volume =2: 240 Mins

Trailer 1

Trailer 2

My first piece of advice is to watch these volumes back to back, it may seem like an ordeal; however, the sustained magnitude and potency of the themes and plot provides a compelling and truly unique cinematic experience. My second piece of advice would be to avoid viewing these features in the company of your parents; they are filled to the brim with profuse imagery of sexual deviance and sordid references to copious amounts of depravity. As open as you’d like to believe you are with your parents, after an experience like this, their presence is guaranteed to make you cringe for weeks to come, your mind a Freudian cesspool of regret. The films were directed by visionary Lars Von Trier and star Charlotte Gainsbourg and Stellan Skarsgård. They are selected for the Mumbai Film Festival (MAMI).

For those who weren’t traumatized by the nature of this film, it offers insights that come to you first hand from a very erudite sexual mind, conveying ideas to what you would call an oblivious inexperienced sexual mind. Both the films have a sardonic tone, when coupled with the gritty dark humour of the protagonist bizarrely creates a sense of comfort for the audience. A subtle artistic balance that is vital in holding the audience in their seats. This comfort zone allows for the audience to be transported to realms of vulgarity, into the darkest recesses of human nature and sexuality, tracing and analysing our need for sexual objectification and our constant need to move towards extremes and top previous experiences to sustain gratification. A strange juxtaposition that can be observed in the films are the endearing moments of innocence, delving into ideas of love and attachment that come so unexpectedly, leaving the audience with goose-bumps and an amorphous bag of feeling that one cannot put a feeling on. The great deal of introspection these films thrust the audience into requires time for reflection before one can compartmentalize and analyze the mixed feelings that one is left with after the viewing

 

The juxtaposition of the protagonist and the supporting character she is in conversation with majority of both the films also offers key social insights into sexuality, the idea of what is acceptable. The premise or most prominent underlying theme of the films is the idea that sexuality is grey and fluid. It rejects that sexuality can be cut and dried, black and white, right and wrong. It suggests that these notions exist from our fear of the unknown, and can at times be chilling in the way it confronts these notions. Another interesting idea explored is that of gender. Conventionally, a sexual deviant has always been a male character, but the shoes (or heels rather) being filled by a woman allows the films to explore layers and nuances of gender through its discerning social commentary.

 

The cinematic techniques employed are breathtakingly apt to the content of the film. There is an overriding sense of decay with both cinematic texture and score as the protagonist recounts her sexual escapades and indiscretions, giving a sense of the peeling and skinning of her psyche, with interspersed moments of clarity and catharsis.

 

The treatment and storytelling experiments with the use of the first film as a conversation, going into flashbacks to explore the past and the second as a continuation of events from the conversation and the ultimate crescendo with a plot twist that is pure poetry brings the experience full circle. A piece of cinematic art.