While those in the U.S. won’t get Lars von Trier‘s Nymphomaniac until early 2014 (via Magnolia Pictures), the helmer is currently whittling away at his life-spanning erotic epic in hopes to get it finished by a Christmas premiere in Denmark and today brings new details on what exactly we can expect.
Revealed over at Montages, we already knew at least 100 hours of material was shot for the project, but we’ve now learned its current iteration stands at 5 hours long, with two volumes being 2.5 hours each. That’s not all we can expect though, as the site reports producers are discussing an additional TV series to add more to the eight-chapter story. We wonder how much of the graphic content would have to be cut down for television airing, but it’s something we’d certainly look forward to.
After seeing three teasers, one could already guess, but each chapter “has its own stylistic approach, dictated by content and tone,” including a mix of formal and experimental techniques, with one section being in black-and-white and another in 1.85:1 ratio (the rest is in Cinemascope). While it’s been reported that the film contains no slow motion — unlike his last two features — there is a chapter shot with a static camera, “resting on faces and bodies, as rigid as a surveillance camera, but much closer to the objects.”
Also including “extensive archive footage,” culled together by von Trier from YouTube, as well as a opening credits in the style of Woody Allen, it’s first half is said to include “pure comedy” before “the story gradually grows darker and more tragic.” It all sounds about as wild as we could imagine and starring Charlotte Gainsbourg, Shia LaBeouf, Uma Thurman, Stellan Skarsgård, Jamie Bell, Stacy Martin, Christian Slater, Willem Dafoe, Connie Nielsen, Udo Kier and Jean-Marc Barr, expect the unexpected come later this year.
What do you think of the new details?