More than any other filmmaker I know, Lars Von Trier loves to work in trilogies. There's the Europa Trilogy (Element of Crime, Epidemic and Europa) The Golden Heart Trilogy (Breaking the Waves, The Idiots and Dancer in the Dark) and the incomplete USA: Land of Opportunities trilogy (Dogville, Manderlay and the un-produced Washington). Nyphomaniac has been described as the culmination of a Depression Trilogy following the director's 2007 breakdown. Yet, while the other films of this trilogy (Antichrist and Melancholia) are content to wallow in the morose muck of a depressed state, Nymphomaniac seems to be about emerging from that mire with perverse humor and playful provocations.
After his breakdown, Lars was quite literally Joe laying bruised and beaten in some forgotten alleyway. Fortunately audiences/critics were there to play Seligman and sympathetically listen to his tales of woe (ie: the other films in the trilogy). At first Lars/Joe was receptive to our kindness, but gradually he came to resent it and started to kick back against the compassion with tiny verbal barbs and cinematic provocation. By the end of Volume II we have a fully recuperated Lars Von Trier who is back in fighting form and itching to bite the hand that feeds...even if it kind of shoots his own film in the foot. So then why do it you ask? I guess the best way to describe that is with a Seligman-esque digression:
A scorpion asks a frog to carry him across a river. The frog is reluctant as he fears the scorpion will sting him during the trip. The scorpion argues that if it stung the frog, they would both sink and drown. Reluctantly the frog agrees, but midway across the river the scorpion does indeed sting the frog, dooming them both. When the frog asks, "Why?" the scorpion can only reply, "It's my nature!"Vol. II is running at The Frida Cinema through April 24th.
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