With all the excitement over the fall festival movies, it’s easy to forget that we’re only a matter of months away from the unveiling of Lars Von Trier‘s latest. Or we would be, if not for the canny stream of information that comes out of “Nymphomaniac.” Even if it weren’t for recent revelations — a total running time of five hours for the two-part film, a potential TV spin-off, a premiere for the hardcore version at Cannes — Von Trier’s been keeping up interest for his new film by releasing a clip every month in the run up to the Christmas premiere in Denmark of the first part.
We’ve had glimpses both salacious and bruising, but things take a more meditative turn in the fourth clip, which was released this morning. From Chapter 4, entitled “Delirium,” and accompanied by the description “Confusion. Delusion. Hallucination. The nymphomaniac’s father dies,” the scene is a single shot, as the titular nymphomaniac Joe (Stacy Martin, unless Charlotte Gainsbourg has taken over by this point in the film) walking towards a drab-looking hospital in which, we can assume, her father (Christian Slater) is on his way out, accompanied by a reading from Poe’s “The Fall Of The House Of Usher” by someone who sounds a good deal like Stellan Skarsgard.
It’s the least revealing of the four clips so far, and one might assume that sex will be on Von Trier’s brain a little less during this section, but then, you should pay attention to the framing of the shot above. If nothing else, it looks gorgeous, and the black-and-white photography suggests that the director will be mixing up styles in between the chapter. “Nymphomaniac” Pt. 1 hits Denmark on December 25th, and should start rolling out around the rest of the world early in 2014.