Nymphomaniac Vol 1&2 (2013)

The title might make you think this is a sexy bit of fluff, but you’d be wrong. It’s directed and written by arthouse darling Lars von Trier, and stars Hollywood heavyweights including Uma Thurman, Shia LaBeouf, Stellan Skarsgard, Willem Dafoe, Jamie Bell and Christian Slater. It follows a woman named Joe, who explores her sexual past and all the dark places her obsession with sex led her as a teenager and young woman.

Yes, Nymphomaniac is about sex, but it’s also a psychological drama about pain.

The Sydney Morning Herald writes, “Strip the plot down, or rather, dress it up, and it’s about a quest. Without warning, Joe loses her ability to reach orgasm. How can she get it back? This urgent question takes over her life. She abandons her baby son and Jerome (Shia LaBeouf), the only man who has ever inspired her with stirrings of love as well as lust, and devotes herself to the search … In the end, I amazed myself by liking the whole thing – although I’m still scarred by the memory of Jamie Bell (alias Billy Elliott) taking charge of the whips and ropes in the sado-masochism scenes.”

Both Volume I and Volume II (it was originally meant to be seen as a whole) are streaming now.