Dir:

Lars von Trier

With: Charlotte Gainsbourg, Stellan Skarsgard, Stacy Martin

Runtime: 117 minutes; 124 minutes

GOD loves a trier, but cinema can be iffy about Lars von Trier these days. Premiering Nymphomaniac, Volumes 1&2 at the Berlin Film Festival recently, the Danish director wore a T-shirt emblazoned with the words "persona non grata" in reference to his ban from Cannes after his 2011 "joke" about understanding Hitler. At Cannes, suddenly, the usual rationalising around von Trier - he is a genius, a visionary, a renegade, what would cinema do without him, etc - did not cut it any more.

One feels the same after sitting through four hours of Nymphomania 1&2. Certainly, there are moments of wickedly sharp humour in this story of a sex addict recounting her life, together with scenes of great cinematic beauty.

And the central performances from Charlotte Gainsbourg and Stellan Skarsgard are extraordinarily good.

Yet for all its cleverness, this is dirty old man cinema covered up in the raincoat of the art house.

It flatters to deceive, attempts to prettify what is ugly (sexual violence), and is well versed in the art of the cop-out. All told, as a supposedly feminist take on female sexuality, Nymphomaniac 1&2 is about as convincing as Confessions of a Window Cleaner.

The film opens with a long, slow take as the camera traces water running down stone steps to an alley. Later, there will be grass blowing gorgeously and trees swaying to and fro. The man gives good nature, that much is certain. The camera continues its descent to a scene of brutality. A young woman, played by Gainsbourg, is lying battered in an alley. Discovered by a stranger (Stellan Skarsgard), she does not want the police or an ambulance, so he takes her to his home to rest. If that is unconvincing, stick around.

Her name is Joe, his is Seligman, and over the course of the next 241 minutes we will get to know her a lot and him just a little. Joe begins her story with a skip back to childhood. Mother was "a cold bitch" but father (Christian Slater) was her idol. So far, so psychologically predictable. Thereafter we accompany the young Joe (played by Stacy Martin) through such adventures as losing her virginity, cruising for sex with strangers on a train, and meeting the person who may or may not be her true love (Shia LaBeouf, who pops up throughout the picture struggling manfully with an English/Australian/Who Knows accent).

As von Trier flashes back and forth, Seligman the bibliophile adds his observations, which vary from the religious to the artistic and are largely of a forgiving nature. Having lived his life through books, there appears to be nothing Seligman does not know. This allows the pair to have a verbal back and forth that ranges from the learned to the screamingly pretentious to the very funny. If there is any actor alive who can deliver a withering put down as stylishly as Gainsbourg I have yet to see her. Bravo to all for keeping straight faces.

This is the genuinely humorous von Trier at work, the one who is expert at the theatre of the absurd. But then there is the other side of him, the side that is surely having a laugh, but not in a good way. Joe's exploits, the situations she finds herself in, are such cliches of male fantasy they would be at home on the top shelf of a newsagents. This is a story of sexual empowerment as scripted by a lads' mag.

As the tale progresses from Volume 1 to 2, other players arrive to strut and fret across the stage.

Among them are Willem Dafoe playing a debt collector and Uma Thurman as a wronged wife. Thurman is by far the most impressive of the supporting cast, and she gets to keep her clothes on (the two, one feels, are not unconnected). Gainsbourg stays in her pyjamas for a lot of the tale, only appearing nude when the story is well under way.

Gainsbourg takes on the toughest material in the second film. It is here that the picture badly loses its way, sliding from the misguided to the stomach-churning as sadism raises its head. In general, as you will have probably guessed from the title and the 18 certificate, Nymphomaniac is not for the faint-hearted. As the BBFC's guidance puts it, Volume 2 contains "strong violence, strong real sex and strong sex references". Volume 1 is no Vicar of Dibley either.

Late on, the screenplay asks if we would feel the same about Joe's story if she had been a man. It is a too clever by half intervention which arrives too late in the picture. By then, the film has had its fun, the sex scenes have played out in graphic detail, the fantasy of nymphomania has been indulged. All that is left is not so much a desire for a cigarette as the feeling that, like Marie Antoinette on a two-year gateaux binge, von Trier has had his cake and eaten it.

Screening on Saturday, February 22, 6.15pm, with live Q&A. At Cineworlds Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen; Cameo, Edinburgh; Belmont, Aberdeen; Dundee, DCA.