Nymphomaniac: Volume II
Magnolia Pictures | Release Date: April 4, 2014 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
60
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 34 Critic Reviews
Positive:
21
Mixed:
9
Negative:
4
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
90
Village VoiceMichelle OrangeApr 1, 2014
Nymphomaniac is a jigsaw opus, an extended and generally exquisitely crafted riff. Story, theme, and character (despite Gainsbourg's captivations) bow to von Trier's gamesmanship, which makes his own promiscuities the film's true subject. Read full review
83
IndieWireBoyd van Hoeij Dec 17, 2013
At its best, the film doesn't strain for meaning but instead treats all of its intellectualizing as a lark that can be taken seriously but doesn't need to be. Read full review
80
Los Angeles TimesMark OlsenApr 3, 2014
Volume II builds on emotional foundations from Volume I, even recasting the first film's ironic humor with a darker pall. Read full review
80
The DissolveNoel MurrayMar 24, 2014
With thoughtfulness and passion, von Trier strives to give his audience a high, accompanied by the meaning of the high. Read full review
80
The TelegraphTim RobeyFeb 20, 2014
The point is that you could watch these films for four hours, then spend 14 arguing about them – about whether sex, for vor Trier, is an eternal human mystery, or a cosmic joke at our expense. Read full review
80
EmpireKim NewmanFeb 18, 2014
A rich movie, seductive when abandoning people for falling snow or bleak nature and funny, painful and unflinching when it gets physical. Read full review
80
Total FilmKate StablesFeb 18, 2014
Thought-provoking rather than arousing, both films explore the director’s ideas about love, sexuality and loneliness. The organ he seeks to stimulate most is your brain. Read full review
80
The GuardianXan BrooksDec 17, 2013
It is so laden with highly charged set pieces, so dappled with haunting ideas and bold flights of fancy that it finally achieves a kind of slow-burn transcendence. Read full review
80
The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyDec 17, 2013
Volume two gets down in ways the first half doesn't, although anything resembling real sensuality remains MIA. Read full review
80
VarietyPeter DebrugeDec 17, 2013
It’s one thing to declare sex a fact of life and insist that audiences confront their unease at seeing it depicted (or, equally constructive, their intense excitation at its mere mention), but quite another to fashion a fictional woman’s life around nothing but sex. As courageously depicted by Gainsbourg, Jo is ultimately a tragic character. Read full review
80
Time Out LondonDave CalhounDec 17, 2013
We’re never far from Von Trier, and both Skarsgård and Gainsbourg appear to offer different versions of the author himself. Read full review
75
St. Louis Post-DispatchJoe WilliamsApr 10, 2014
For better or worse, the whole exercise in lurid leg-pulling goes out with a bang. Read full review
75
RogerEbert.comSheila O'MalleyApr 4, 2014
I wonder how people will feel about the final moment of the film. I thought it was great, albeit extremely cynical. Read full review
75
Boston GlobeTy BurrApr 3, 2014
Vol. II is less focused than “Vol. I” — less funny, too, although there are a few dank laughs — and you feel Von Trier’s inspiration and energy start to flag during the final laps. Read full review
75
The A.V. ClubA.A. Dowd Mar 20, 2014
Taken as a whole, with volumes one and two in concert, Nymphomaniac looks like nothing less than a career overview, touring each era of the director’s development. Read full review
70
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzApr 3, 2014
This is a good movie, but it lacks the visual wonder of the first, along with the sense of play at which von Trier, even at his most controversial, is so good. Read full review
67
Entertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanApr 3, 2014
A notch more watchable than Volume I, if only because Joe, the self-destructive heroine, is now played front and center by the magnetically dyspeptic Charlotte Gainsbourg instead of the vacuous model Stacy Martin. Read full review
67
The PlaylistBen BrockMar 20, 2014
If you thought Vol. I was a brilliant piece of provocation, then Vol. II might disappoint you with its detour into (relative) conventionality, its attacks on arthouse artificiality, and its apparently very different politics. But if you found Vol. I to be as silly as some did, then Vol. II suggests something interesting: Lars von Trier might agree. Read full review
63
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsApr 3, 2014
Vol. II turns into a battle (like most von Trier films) between the filmmaker's baser instincts and his searching ones. Read full review
63
Miami HeraldRene RodriguezApr 3, 2014
Much like the first film, Nymphomaniac Vol.2 isn’t remotely erotic or a turn-on — it’s a curiously intellectual experience that doesn’t move you below the neck, including the heart. Read full review
63
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Liam LaceyMar 20, 2014
Volume 2 picks up the story with an older Joe, now played by Gainsbourg, with her watchful sad face showing the character’s unsatisfied hunger. It seems more von Trier’s script than any great social taboos that cause Joe to go into free fall in a world that becomes more kinky and sinister. Read full review
60
New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike ScottApr 4, 2014
It all adds up to weave an engaging story, and not just for its wealth of titillations. Many of the sex scenes, in fact, feel more clinical than anything else. Read full review
60
The New York TimesA.O. ScottApr 3, 2014
The problem with Nymphomaniac: Volume II lies not in its display of erect penises and reddened buttocks, but rather in its dull narrative and overworked ideas. Read full review
55
Film.comJordan HoffmanApr 7, 2014
It's darker, stranger and pushes more buttons. Read full review
50
Portland OregonianMarc MohanApr 16, 2014
The scenes between Gainsbourg and Skarsgard are fewer and less engaging than in the first volume, and the dichotomy between them is simpler and more obvious. And that doesn't even include an ending that is as impulsive and deranged as anything Joe comes up with during all of her taboo-breaking adventures. Read full review
50
Washington PostAnn HornadayApr 3, 2014
Even at its most depraved, Joe’s journey, and her confession to Seligman, are still compelling enough to propel Volume II until the story becomes hopelessly over-plotted. Read full review
50
New York PostSara StewartApr 3, 2014
Given the scarcity of movies about lust from the female point of view, this is kind of a bummer. Read full review
50
Rolling StonePeter TraversApr 3, 2014
With raw shock and a riveting Uma Thurman absent this time, Nymphomaniac: Volume II is a metaphoric limp dick. Read full review
50
Austin ChronicleMarc SavlovApr 2, 2014
Not an easy film to love and politically incorrect to the hilt, it nevertheless leaves its mark on you – and it’s rarely, if ever, dull. Read full review
50
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliMar 27, 2014
A clear case of a narrative running out of steam. Exhaustingly repetitive, this movie attempts many of the same things its predecessor did but with less succes. Read full review
38
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperApr 3, 2014
For all of von Trier’s attempts to go big and go bold, the two Nymphomaniac films ultimately come across as a self-indulgent marathon run on a treadmill. Read full review
38
Slant MagazineChuck BowenMar 30, 2014
The sex in Nymphomaniac is inhuman, mechanical, boring, and predictably viewed through the (male) scrim of someone who characterizes women solely as withholders. Read full review
25
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleApr 3, 2014
There are phony movies made every week, but this is in a different category - a phony movie that seems a distortion of something real, a phony movie offered in place of the real movie von Trier could have made, but it would have cost him something. Some blood, some truth, some soul. What we're left with instead is an empty gesture. Read full review
0
New York Daily NewsJoe NeumaierApr 3, 2014
Here we go again. Danish director Lars von Trier has pumped out Nymphomaniac: Vol II just a few weeks after “Vol. I” came out. And the results are the same: zero stars. Read full review
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