'Nymphomaniac: Volume I' is stimulating but not pornographic

City Paper grade: B

If the title weren’t warning enough, the “Next on …” teaser at the end of Nymphomaniac: Volume I makes it clear that this is only half a movie. (Volume II is available on demand, and will open on April 4.) In fact, it’s slightly less, a pared-down edition of the “international version,” trimmed largely — but not exclusively — for sexual content, itself a shadow of the five-and-a-half-hour director’s cut. So what the hell are you watching? That question may pop up more than once as Charlotte Gainsbourg’s Joe relates her life of sexual depravity to Stellan Skarsgard’s all-ears eunuch, flashing back to the discovery of her private parts — Lars Von Trier makes sure to drop the c-bomb early and often — and through the years when Joe is incarnated, in every sense, by the lissome Stacy Martin. There’s plenty of sexual explicitness in the first part of Joe’s odyssey, as well as surprisingly lengthy disquisitions on the art of fly fishing, but Nymphomaniac isn’t pornographic for the simple reason that it’s not meant to excite its audience — that is, unless intellectual excitement counts. The real action isn’t between Joe’s legs but between her and her inquisitive listener, and the way she reshapes her own story in terms he can understand. It’s far funnier than you might expect and at least as frustrating, and it’s only the beginning.