'Nympho: Vol. II,' pushing the boundaries, slowly

How did Charlotte Gainsbourg get so broken and banged up? What was she doing at the start of Nymphomaniac: Vol. I, splayed out in an alley when Stellan Skarsgård, shuffling home with his sorry sack of groceries, finds her?

Can't stand the suspense?

Lars von Trier's Nymphomaniac: Vol. II has the answers, but it's a long plod getting there. (Vol. I, released two weeks ago, is still playing at the Ritz Bourse if you feel the need to catch up.)

At once sadder, and screwier, than Vol. I, which recalled the sexual awakenings and addictions of our protagonist and storyteller, Nymphomaniac: Vol. II finds Gainsbourg's woebegone Joe sipping tea and telling Skarsgård's lonely old man her "dirty stories" about spontaneous orgasms and, later, her inability to achieve same; about her hotel room encounter with two strapping Africans; her bracing sessions with a clinical sadist (Jamie Bell), and her mentorship of a young waif in a debt-collection racket.

Threaded between these flashbacking yarns, her character and Skarsgård's exchange quizzical observations about anatomy, history, religion, Ian Fleming, political correctness. and pedophilia. (Gainsbourg acts out the scenes here; in Vol. I, Stacy Martin played the teenage Joe.)

Eventually, we arrive at the incident that left Joe unconscious and bloodied in a brick-walled maze, and we learn a bit more about Skarsgård's "silly man," as Joe calls him.

Von Trier is a filmmaker who pushes boundaries - you can practically picture him giddy with pleasure over the way he has thrown together these themes of addiction, obsession, isolation, transgression, and transformation, with hard-core sex and close-ups of genitalia to ice the cake.

But if his pretensions and provocations coalesced in Vol. I to engage and amuse (and occasionally bewilder), Vol. II, atonal and seemingly eternal, is far less interesting. Still, von Trier is forever the prankster: Nymphomania's final chapter (8) is titled "The Gun." And when it's all said and done, when the screen turns black, the footsteps go clacking off into the distance, and the credits roll, Gainsbourg herself can be heard whispering through a rendition of the Jimi Hendrix classic "Hey Joe."

The song's refrain: "Hey Joe, where you goin' with that gun in your hand?"

Where indeed?

Directed by Lars von Trier. With Charlotte Gainsbourg, Stellan Skarsgård, Shia LaBeouf, Jamie Bell, Stacy Martin, Willem Dafoe. Distributed by Magnolia Pictures.

Running time: 2 hours, 3 mins.

Parent's guide: No MPAA rating (explicit sex, nudity, profanity, violence, adult themes).

Playing at: Ritz East.EndText