Lars von Trier is no stranger to courting controversy with his movies - from The Idiots to Antichrist, von Trier mines transgressive territory with an eye that doesn't flinch away from the darker and stranger sides of human nature. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that Nymphomaniac is hardly going to be family friendly. Much was made of the unsimulated sex in Nymphomaniac and the film certainly has more than its fair share of hardcore scenes, but this is not the titillation of pornography. Sex here is compulsive, indiscriminate and ultimately devoid of any genuine connection, and von Trier films it with a cold detachment. A scene which captures just how different from most people sex is for Joe, the nymphomaniac in question, comes early in the film where, as a young teenager, she joins a friend in a competition to see who can have sex with the most passengers on a train. Joe performs oral sex on a middle aged man, his discomfort and look of shame counterpointing her frivolous competitiveness - added to the several men she'd already had sex with in the train toilets this means she wins the competition with her friend and can claim the bag of chocolate sweets.
