Nymphomaniac: Vol. II
This film is a continuation of Nymphomaniac: Vol. I, split up for length. It does not stand alone and will not make sense without having reviewed the first part.Young Joe (Stacy Martin) is in bed naked, eyes wide open. Jerôme (Shia LaBeouf) is now living with Joe but all of her lovers still try to contact her knocking on the door, calling incessantly. He answers the door. Unplugs the phone. Joe looks out the window to see an empty parking spot where one of her lovers usually parks. Cut to Jerôme and Joe having sex on her bed; she is expressionless.A current day adult Joe (Charlotte Gainsbourg) explains in narration that when she was 12, she was on a field trip in the hills. In a flashback, we see a young Joe lying alone in fields with nature buzzing all around her. A few classmates are gossiping nearby. All of a sudden, she begins to shake violently and the 12-year-old Joe floats up off the ground. She gets higher and higher and a foggy glow passes over her. Now we see two females levitating beside her in the sky, all illuminated by the same glow on one side is a woman with a veil; on the other is a woman holding a child.In present day, Seligman (Stellan Skarsgård) asks Joe if she's kidding him for she had a spontaneous orgasm and had a vision of two women on either side of her. He asks if one was holding a veil with two fingers. He identifies one woman, from her description, as Valeria Messalina, the wife of the emperor Claudius, the most notorious nymphomaniac in history. The other he determines was the Whore of Babylon, riding a nimrod in the form of a bull. He says her story is like a blasphemous retelling of the Transfiguration of Jesus on the Mount, which is one of the Eastern Church's holiest passages. It's when the humanity of Christ is illuminated by the divine light of eternity. If anyone else had told him the story, he would have written it off as a blasphemous joke but Joe clearly didn't know who she had seen in her vision. He explains it started with a spontaneous orgasm and then (years later) she lost her ability to orgasm altogether.We see a naked Young Joe floating above a body of water, rotating lower and lower until she fades away Seligman asks if it was like Wagner's Das Rheingold (Descent into Nibelheim). She tells him to imagine in one swoop that hes lost all desire to read we then see a clothed Seligman floating above a huge pile of books before fading into obscurity.In flashback, Young Joe masturbates late at night, unsuccessfully. She goes to the kitchen and wets a rag and pounds it against her vagina. Jerôme awakens and comforts her as she screams.Seligman compares this to Zenos' paradox; she is Achilles and the tortoise is the orgasm. Because she was giving chase, she couldn't reach satisfaction. Joe tells him he seems like he's not taking this very seriously shes telling him about the worst thing that's ever happened to her, that within seconds, she had lost all sexual sensation and her cunt (how Joe refers to her vagina) went numb. She doubts hes even listening because whenever she tells other men about sexual experiences, it was easy to see they had gotten excited. He says hes gotten excited but she points out only about mathematical crap, not the story. She then realizes he is asexual and cant relate to her stories. He admits he is a virgin. He can read sexual tales Canterbury Tales, or Decameron but only gets literary enjoyment out of it, not sexual. He points out that because he has no preconceived notion, he's the best judge to determine whether she's a bad human being, as she theorizes; he doesn't look at her through glasses colored by sexual experiences because he's a virgin and innocent.Joe notices a painting on a wall of a woman with child. He says the woman was connected to the Eastern Church and explains that the Christian church was split up in 1054 because of differences in opinion between the Eastern Church and Western Church (Orthodox Church and Roman Catholic Church). The painting depicts a typical Eastern Church icon Virgin Mary and the infant Jesus while the Western Church focuses more on Jesus crucifixion as iconography. He explains, "To generalize, you could say that the Western Church is the church of suffering and the Eastern Church is the church of happiness. If you imagine a journey from Rome eastward, you're moving away from guilt and pain towards joy and light." Joe points out he said he didn't believe in God but he says the concept of religion is interesting to him, just like the concept of sex. She decides to call the chapter The Eastern Church and the Western Church but it wont be about traveling east from Rome towards the light but rather the opposite (moving from joy to suffering). So in order to keep it from being too sad, she decides to pep up the name of the chapter with an extra title.CHAPTER SIX: THE EASTERN AND THE WESTERN CHURCH (THE SILENT DUCK)Young Joe's vagina continues to be unresponsive to sex but she is still able to have fun with Jerôme. They are in a restaurant and he offers her five dollars to put a long spoon "up her cunt." She goes to the back bar, grabs six more spoons, and shoves them inside herself, one by one. A few patrons take note and look on with disgust. The waiter (Udo Kier) comes back with two ice cream sundaes; he asks if they have spoons since none are on the table. Joe asks for some and he returns with two spoons. They both eat their sundaes. When they are ready to leave, the waiter comes back with Joe's jacket. As she puts it on, a spoon falls out of her dress. As they continue towards the door, more and more spoons clink on the ground.In present day, Joe points out the irony that it was during this period where she couldn't feel any sexual pleasure that she was also experiencing domestic comfort for the first time (since Jerôme had moved in with her). She became pregnant because she was careless about birth control pills. She has to have a Cesarean since she still was hoping sensation would return to her cunt; during the operation, she hears noises from the operation ringing out in the same tune as the one from the Little Flock (determined in the last film to be a Satanic song). She looks at the light fixture overhead and when the baby is pulled out of her, she thinks she sees the baby laughing demonically at her.Seligman points out that Noah's son Ham was laughing when he was born and this is another Satanic omen. Joe names her son Marcel after Mars, the Roman god of war. Seligman asks if maternal love lived up to her expectations but she explains, it was her who had not; maternal love wasn't the problem. But every time she looked in her child's eyes, she had an unsettling feeling of having been found out. In flashback, we see Young Joe playing cautiously with her infant baby, explaining that from her perception, her love wasn't being returned.A naked Jerôme and Young Joe have sex in their bedroom. Even though Young Joe no longer feels pleasure during sex, her nymphomania doesn't stop and she still requires Jerôme to have a lot of sex every day, which eventually becomes laborious for him. She tells him to "fill all my holes," (a flashback to the end of the first film).On a later date, Jerôme tells Joe that he loves her adventurous nature but he isn't able to satisfy her the way she wants to. He wants to continue their sex life but suggests that she should take on lovers again to help satiate her hunger. She kisses him in response. Later, she playfully slaps him.Later, Joe decides to improve her concept of "fuck me now" clothes by dressing up as a piano teacher. With some Beethoven sheet music, she is now wearing glasses, her hair in a bun, and frumpy clothes. She stops her car in the middle of a one-way street, pops the hood, and disconnects all the spark plugs. A male driver is stopped behind her. She asks for his help. Now all the men that are delayed by her halted car try to figure out how to plug the spark plugs back in correctly but there are 40,320 combinations. This gives her time to seduce men; a huge crowd gathers around her, discussing topics like Beethoven (her sheet music) while she flirts.Joe comes home to a waiting Jerôme and her son. There is an awkwardness between them. He punches something off the wall, trying to conceal his jealousy. Later, he sits in his car, trying to calm himself down, while we hear Beethoven on the soundtrack.In present day, Joe explains she has to jump ahead three years in the story to depict the suffering Western Church. She tells a story about meeting "The Dangerous Men." She (now played by Charlotte Gainsbourg from this point onward) is walking Marcel in a stroller; she explains that Jerôme travels most of the time and when he is finally home, he spends most of his time accusing her of neglecting their son, which she figures is just a cover for his anger over her lovers. She still does not feel sexual satisfaction. Joe passes five African men talking in the park, in a different language. She watches one of them from her window and decides it would turn her on to have a sexual situation in which verbal communication was impossible. She hires a translator to go up to the man she likes and ask him if he wants to have sex with her. He approaches the man. The translator comes back with a note listing a time and a place.Joe ends up at a cheap hotel. The black African man she likes (who she refers to as 'N') enters the room, along with a smaller man. She doesn't speak their language but she gathers N has brought his brother along. Both men undress Joe, speaking to each other the whole time. They observe her and begin to argue over who will have sex with her anally and who will have sex with her vaginally. She finally climbs on top of the guy she likes and begins to ride him. His brother gets upset and they argue. The second man begins to have sex with her from behind while she is on top of his brother. They argue again and toss Joe aside. She sits on the bed, annoyed, while the two bicker back and forth. As a result, she grabs her clothes and leaves the two black men behind in the room who are still arguing with each other. Joe explains to Seligman in voice-over that she later learned that performing a sandwich requires great sensitivity because the men can feel each other through the tissue.In present day, Joe explains that the quarrel had probably started on the stairs when one had laid claim to one of her holes "which was in conflict with his Negro brothers interest." Seligman tells her not to use the word because its not politically correct. Joe responds that its always been a mark of honor for her to call a spade a spade and "each time a word becomes prohibited, you remove a stone from the democratic foundation. Society demonstrates its impotence in the face of the concrete problem by removing words from the language." Seligman tells her society would claim that political correctness is a very precise expression of democratic concern for minorities. Joe adamantly counters that, "Society is as cowardly as the people in it who, in my opinion, are also too stupid for democracy." Seligman disagrees, having no doubt in the human qualities. She explains the human qualities can be expressed in one word hypocrisy. They evaluate those who say right but mean wrong and mock those who say wrong but mean right. She also adds that women who say Negros dont turn them on are lying. The men didn't satisfy her but they showed her there was a world she had to explore and it would be there that she'd get her life back.Joe goes into a waiting room in a seemingly empty building. Two women wait silently besides her. The door opens. A man (Jamie Bell) exits a hallway and observes those waiting; he asks Joe who she is. She tells him that she knows what he does and would like to be one of the women he sees. He refuses and invites another woman in, calling her "Madame." A new woman enters the waiting area with flagellation scars all over her legs. The three women sit silently.Eventually, Madame leaves, followed by the man who refers to the new woman as Princess and reminds her he forbid her to return for five days. Without discussion, she stands up and leaves. He then acknowledges Joe again, telling her he doesn't think this is for her. He takes the remaining woman inside the hallway, leaving Joe alone in the waiting room.Seligman asks Joe to explain the mystery of the situation. She calls the man "K" and says his business was something she was completely against but because of her rebellious nature, she contacted him as a last desperate attempt to rehabilitate her sexuality. Joe compares Ks violent technique to the Western Church and points out that their systematic approach of the crucifixion is of a violent and sadistic nature.K returns to the hallway where Joe is still waiting. He tells her that she is beginning to irritate him. He asks her to sit completely relaxed while he hits her in the face. K then slaps her aggressively hard. When he moves in again, she flinches. He hits her a second time. She takes a moment but recovers. He agrees to let her join but explains the rules he doesn't fuck her, no exception. They have no safe word so he will not stop no matter what she says. He tells her to bring a brown used leather riding crop and not one from a sex shop but a real one. Finally, he explains the third rule she will have to wait between 2 and 6 PM if she wants to join and it will not be pre-determined when he will call her in. She tells him her babysitters not reliable and she cant leave her child. He begins to walk away. She tells him he doesn't even know her name; he tells her hes not interested and that here, shell be known as Fido. He enters the hallway, leaving Joe alone again.Days later, Joe leaves Marcel with a babysitter. She finally is led into the back room with K. She provides the riding crop. He has Joe tie her hair up in case he needs to hit her in the face. She asks if she should take her clothes off and he says he will tell her what to do and when. He positions a chair and tells her to bend over it. The chair doesn't measure up for K so he has Joe bend over an old couch instead. She bends over one side, on her stomach, and he ties a sort of seat belt over her back, strapping her in. He ties her wrists together and binds the rope to the base of the couch, then duct tapes her ankles and wraps the tape around the other end. He pulls her skirt up and chastises her for wearing knickers. He cant get them around her bound legs so he cuts them off with a pair of scissors. Joe is sobbing on the couch. K is holding the riding crop but tells her that her ass is not high enough and he doesn't think they can do it. He penetrates her ass hole and there is only a small amount of lubrication; he tells her to come back on Thursday. He adds a name tag "FIDO" on the riding crop and hangs it in a cabinet alongside three others.Days later, Joe calls the babysitter's answering machine and chastises her for not showing up. She tells her she hopes she gets this message and comes as quickly as she can; she adds that Marcel is sleeping and she has to go now. After contemplation, Joe leaves her sleeping toddler home alone so she can make her appointment with K. He puts a phone book under her crotch to elevate her butt, then binds her again and tightens the seat belt over her back. He penetrates her ass hole again with his finger and is happier with the larger amount of secretion. K tells Joe she's going to hit her 12 times, no matter how much she screams because no one can hear her down there. Before he strikes, she screams out. He tells her, "That's not how it goes. Most people don't scream until I hit them." He hits her once. Twice. Three times. She whimpers. Four times. She is in unbearable pain. Five times. Six times. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. Eleven. Twelve. She is whimpering. He tells her, "That's it." She thanks him and he tells her she's very welcome.In present day, Joe tells Seligman she doesn't know where they get their sexuality from or where tendencies of that kind come from but probably a perversion in their childhood that never manifested itself before. Seligman points out that Freud says the opposite that there is a polymorphic perversion of a child and we use childhood to remove or diminish some of them, that a child is polymorphic and everything is sexuality in an infant. But Joe said it was deeply bizarre to lie there and want to lie there. Seligman points out that it lubricated an expectation for pain that she hadn't experienced; her body prepared herself for an intercourse that she knew wouldn't happen. Joe describes the mood as sexual and while she twisted and turned during the whipping, she realized how clever his knots were if she fought them, they would get tighter and as she relaxed, it seemed they did, too. Seligman tells her about the Prusik knot, named after a mountain climber named Prusik. His friend and him had a mountain climbing accident and his friend died; he ended up hanging at the end of a rope with no possibility of getting out since you cant climb up a thin mountain climbers rope. He took the shoelaces out of his shoes and made two loops and affixed them to the rope. And he could move these up since they weren't under tension and he could step into them and climb the rope and save himself. Joe tells Seligman this is one of his weakest digressions.She continues her story K fills a rubber glove with coins and then puts it on his hand. He slaps Joe hard with the coin-filled glove. After she gets naked, he tells her he's going to give her a Christmas present but she has to do the work herself. He ties a blood knot into a rope and tells her she needs to make nine ropes with blood knots on each. When she has completed this, he balls up some fabric and shoves it in her mouth.Joe returns to her apartment to find Marcel asleep safely in his crib. She breathes a sigh of relief.Days later, Joe is in the waiting room with two other women, checking her watch. The three-year-old Marcel hears a snowplow outside and wakes up. He crawls out of his crib and runs towards the balcony. When Jerôme arrives home later, he discovers his son on the outside patio, unmonitored.Joe and Jerôme are sitting by the fireplace. He asks her if she's still more fond of him than the others and wonders if she's going to leave tonight. She tells him no but he accuses her of lying to him. He says if she leaves tonight, she'll never see Marcel or himself ever again.That night, Joe struggles with a compulsion to leave to meet with K. Jerôme asks if she's saying goodbye and points out she's not a mother. He wakes up Marcel who begins crying and reaching out to Joe. He points out that it's Christmas but she leaves anyway.Joe bypasses the waiting room and walks in on K with a woman; she tells him that "Today, it is Madame who must wait." K asks Madame to leave. Joe reaches out to K and kisses him but he pulls away. He gives Joe the Christmas present he's kept in his desk. She unwraps it it is a flog built with the nine pieces of rope. She places it on a chair and bends over the couch. She tells him, "I want your cock." She reaches out for K's pants but he backs away. He leaves her tied up to the couch for a while. Finally, he picks up the flog and says on account of the holiday and her behavior, he's going to give her the original Roman maximum of 40 lashes. He begins lashing Joe across her ass several times. She has figured out K's knot technique so she has become able to loosen her position to move her pelvis and is able to stimulate her clitoris against the phone book he had to place under her for height. The lashing continues as classical music plays on the soundtrack. He finally reaches 40 and she screams out in agony; this is juxtaposed with the image of the 12-year-old Joe levitating in the air towards an ethereal glow.Seligman predicts that when she comes home, Jerôme and her child were gone. She confirms that she hasn't seen Marcel since. In anger, she throws a teacup against the wall. Joe tells Seligman that Jerôme said he couldn't prioritize a child into his life either so he put Marcel into a foster home somewhere in rural England. Her only contact with her son is the £1,000 she puts into his account every month. Seligman asks what happened to the silent duck, as Joe has forgotten. One night, K had been in a good mood and said he'd introduce her to the concept of the silent duck. K bunches up his fingers and makes his thumb like a mouth (like you would in a sock puppet), puts it in his mouth, and then puts his fist up Joe's anus. Seligman imagines hundreds of ducks quacking.Joe notices Seligman's mirror and asks if he's ready for another chapterCHAPTER SEVEN: THE MIRRORSet another year or so later, Joe is seen masturbating on a toilet at work. She begins bleeding from her clitoris after years of self-abuse. Joe leaves the bathroom and passes several co-workers who give her dirty looks. Her female boss has set up a meeting to discuss rumors about Joe that are going around the office that she sees men every evening and spends long nights with them. That she can't be trusted and will steal everyone's men. Joe admits she can't keep away from her coworkers men. The boss says she's spoken with a psychologist and her addiction can be treated in a therapy group. She demands Joe go, even though she doesn't want to, pointing out that this problem will persist her in any workplace.When asked about why she refused to go into therapy by Seligman, Joe reveals a very troubling story to him. A year after leaving Jerôme and worried about another pregnancy, Joe stops using birth control and finds herself impregnated by one of her lovers. She demands her physician remove the fetus immediately, which he doesn't and tells her that, to get an abortion, she must have a consultation with a psychiatrist. The meeting with the psychiatrist goes disastrously as Joe clashes with her over what she wants and what the psychiatrist thinks is best. In haste, Joe sterilizes and prepares several tools, takes a mixture of pills and vodka and, using the information she had acquired from her time in medical school, performs the abortion herself in her kitchen, eventually pulling the eleven week fetus out with a wire hanger. At first too shocked to answer, Seligman politely states that he feels for how Joe must have felt in that moment while stressing his need to not know how she did it. Almost offended by his opinion and his desire to not know the exact methods, Joe and Seligman clash over talks of abortion rights, the morality of abortion and killing animals for food and additional tools for removing the fetus before Joe talks about how she and her father would save snails on the walking trail from certain doom. Eventually, heads are cooled and Joe returns to where she left off in her story.Joe is in the therapy group filled with women who consider themselves sex addicts. Joe calls herself a nymphomaniac, although the moderator convinces her to use "sex addict" and that there, everyone is the same under that description. After the meeting, Joe has stayed to talk with the moderator Joe repeats the woman's theory that nobody can remove their sexuality even if its destroying their lives. The moderator clarifies, maybe one in a million sex addicts could live a life without sexuality and so her therapy isn't to cure them but to remove exposure. She suggests Joe determine what incentives she has (from expressing her nymphomania) and make it difficult to come in contact with them. Joe needs to get rid of anything that makes her think of sex so Joe goes home and cuts up the phone line, throws away books, gets rid of everything in the bathroom, tosses paintings, mirrors. She even paints over a bigger mirror so she cant see the glass, tapes newspapers over the windows so she cant see men walking by. Now her apartment is completely empty except for the herbarium she started as a kid (a book of plant pressings). She flips through the pages, licking her finger to turn each page. She begins licking her finger more sensuously and then performs fellatio on several fingers. It becomes apparent she can get rid of everything and the nymphomania wont disappear.In the therapy group, Joe tells the group she hasn't had sex for three weeks and five days. She has brought notes to tell them how she did it. After starting her speech, telling them that they're all alike, she looks in a nearby mirror and sees her 10-year-old self seated in the auditorium, watching her. The moderator asks if she wants a glass of water; she does. Joe still cannot start her speech, constantly glancing at the 10-year-old in the mirror (who she's betraying by denouncing her nymphomania). The moderator asks if she'd rather share another time. Joe looks again at the vision in the mirror, then tears up her speech and recites a new one on the fly she tells the group they are not all alike pointing out one woman who fucks to validated, another who just wants to be filled up in any capacity, and the moderator isn't empathetic but is acting like society's morality police whose duty it is to erase Joe's obscenity from the earth. She explains she's not like them she is a nymphomaniac and loves herself for being one; she loves her cunt and her filthy, dirty lust. Joe walks away from the shaken-up group.Cut to Joe randomly setting a car on fire inside of a large mansion.In present day, Seligman asks what happened. Joe apologizes for being in a hurry to get to the last chapter. Joe says that she finally realized society had no room for her and she had no room for society and never had. She looks around the room and cannot find an inspiration for a story heading for the next chapter. Seligman tells her text can sometimes seem empty and she might need to change her point of view. Things hide when they get familiar but if you look at them at another angle, they might take on new meaning. We see a vagina rotated and it turns into an eyeball. Joe turns her head and notices a stain on the wall from where her tea splashed against the wall. She asks Seligman if he sees what she sees he identifies the stain as a revolver but Joe explains that its a pistol because a revolver has a drum that revolves. It becomes clear Joe is very well versed in guns she identifies the stain as a Walther PPK automatic, which she recalls seeing in a Bond film. Joe explains that this is definitely something she can use for her chapter heading.CHAPTER EIGHT: THE GUNBack to Joe setting a car on fire. She walks away. Joe tells Seligman she doesn't know if she left society or it left her but she was now resorting to "debt collecting" (extortion) for a living. That's why she has burned someone's car.For a long time, she's known about a man named 'L'. She knocks on the door and meets L (Willem Dafoe), a gruff middle-aged man, for the first time. He knows who she is and thinks she has excellent qualifications. She points out that she can't have an office job because her nymphomania conflicts with it. He suggests that she starts her own business, with his help. She has a great insight on a broad spectrum of men and he suggests it be capitalized on. He needs subcontractors who can put moderate pressure on individuals with whom his clients have a bone to pick. Basically, he wants her to extort men who owe money but he uses the term "debt collector". He also encourages her to dissuade perspective on whether the clients wishes are justified or not.Joe's skills with men and sex, as well as specialized skills (like learning to tie a blood knot) make her a great debt collector. A man is tied to a table with his pants down. She goes to hit him with the knot; when he flinches, she repeats what K originally told her "This is not how it goes. You have to wait until you're hit."The next gig we see is her with two "helpers" in a very exquisite mansion, owned by a man in a suit who seems disinterested in the havoc they're causing. The henchmen destroy some of his things but the man doesn't seem to care. Joe is unable to read him sexually so she orders the henchmen to tie him to a chair. She pulls down his pants and explains that all men come with built-in truth tellers (i.e., whether his penis becomes erect or not). She tries various stories to see what will arouse him stories of sado-masochism, homosexuality, etc. He doesn't react to anything. So, as a last ditch effort, she tells him a story about him walking through the park and hearing something. The man begins to get erect. She realizes he is imagining hearing children on a playground and makes up an imaginary boy playing in the sandpit who looks at him, sits on his lap, asks if he can come home with him. The man's erection begins to grow. She continues the story "when you're home, you can't fight the idea of being naked together". The man finally agrees to pay, in order to make her stop. He begins sobbing, ashamed. After a moment, Joe gets on her knees and performs oral sex on the man's erect penis.In the present, Seligman is confused. Joe tells him that she took pity on him for having just destroyed his life. Nobody knew his secret, maybe not even himself. She points out that he had succeeded in suppressing his desire and never given into it, right up until she forced it out. He had lived a life full of denial and never hurt a soul, which she considers laudable. Seligman can't relate and she points out he is thinking of the five percent (of pedophiles) who hurt children; the remaining 95 percent never live out their fantasies. She tells him to think about their suffering, given that sexuality is the strongest force in human beings. To be born with a forbidden sexuality must be agonizing. "The pedophile who manages to get through life with the shame of his desire while never acting on it deserves a bloody medal," Joe tells him. She also admits she related to the man because she identified with his loneliness for being a sexual outcast.Some years pass and Joe's loan and collection business grows, allowing her to make higher amounts of anonymous deposits to Marcel. L tells her her business is doing great, she completes all the jobs he gives her to perfection, and the clients have nothing but praise for her.... but since she's getting older (Joe is now in her mid-to-late 40's), she has to start thinking about a successor. He tells her the process of finding her replacement involves finding a young teenager, finding out what parents are incarcerated, leaving a void in their child's life, and then find out where the kid plays football (U.S. soccer) and "you get involved, cheering them on, no matter how bad they are the worse the better". That way, Joe will take on the role of a foster parent until she has a loyal helper that will walk through fire for her, even do jail time for her. Joe isn't keen on the idea but L points out that at the least, she would provide parenting for a kid who would otherwise go without any. He's already found a suitable subject: a 15-year-old girl from a family of hardened criminals who has already been institutionalized. Her mother recently died of a drug overdose and her father is in prison. She plays basketball, very badly; she's chosen a team sport because she's lonely. And her right ear is slightly deformed which she's very ashamed of and this isolates her even more and makes her an easy target for a bit of affection or empathy.Joe has been talked into having a look and she attends a high school basketball game. She feels repulsed by the plan but nonetheless cheers for the teen girl with the deformed ear, who seems very sad and vulnerable (she also is sure to keep her right ear hidden under her hair). She calls the girl P (Mia Goth) and being around her fills her with pity and emotion and she finds herself attending each game every weekend.After a game, P approaches Joe and thanks her for cheering for her. Joe tells P she played really good and that she's been improving. Joe takes P to the same park that her father (Christian Slater) taught her about trees having souls, when she was 10. The ten-year-old Joe points out that the souls of the trees look like human souls and her dad agrees they look like twisted souls, regular souls, crazy souls, all depending on the lives human beings lead. He has found his soul tree he shows it to her, an oak tree in the shape of a Y. In the park, Joe tells P that she had never found her own soul tree but her dad had told her shed know it when she sees it.A few years later, when P becomes the age of majority (age 17 or 18) and Joe becomes her personal adviser, she asks P to move in with her. In their home, Joe convinces P to put her hair up and she is comfortable enough with Joe to let her right ear be exposed. At this time, all of Joe's sexual activity had stopped and her groin was one big sore from her abuse that wouldn't heal and it makes even masturbation impossible. Joe experiences abstinence symptoms fever and cramps. She is in horrible pain every evening. One night, Joe wakes up from sleep in chronic pain to get a drink of water and some aspirin. In the bathroom, she drops the glass on the floor and it shatters. P awakens and helps her clean up the broken pieces. P then helps Joe up off the floor and to bed where she gives her some aspirin and another glass of water and Joe goes to sleep.In the present, Seligman asks if P really loved her. Joe says she couldn't accept it.In the flashback, P takes care of Joe while she's resting, still in severe pain, the morning after the incident. P wants to see what Joe's vagina looks like since it's hurting her greatly. Joe argues her not to look, but P replies that she also has a deformity with her ear and wants to see. P looks at Joe's vagina and notices all the bruises from years of sexual activity as well as her Cesarean scar from when she gave birth. It makes her aware of how sexual Joe used to be. P undresses and asks if Joe likes her. Joe tells her she's beautiful. P gets into bed and begins to kiss Joe and all over her naked body (carefully avoiding her groin area). Joe only responds by crying.Seligman asks if P knew what Joe did for a living (debt collecting). Joe explains that P never asked about her work and was a very discrete person.But one day, in the park, P asked Joe why she started coming to her basketball matches and guesses it wasn't a coincidence. Joe tells her she's right and that she didn't tell her because she didn't want her to be upset with her. Joe tells P that her job is illegal. P points out that no one in her family does anything legal. Joe says a man ('L') that worked in her business suggested she become friends with P to see if she could use her in her line of work. P tells her not to feel bad because if she hadn't, they'd never have met. She asks Joe if she can go to work with her on her next assignment; the two of them kiss. P playfully begs Joe again to let her go... marking the beginning a lesbian romance between Joe and P.Seligman explains that social inheritance is irrefutable and if anybody knew about the laws of the street (and be appropriate for extortion), it must have been P. Joe confirms he is right.P is now working alongside Joe and the two henchmen. But she takes an overly aggressive approach to the victim, threatening him with a gun, forcing Joe to yell at her. Later at home, Joe tells P they don't use violence and demands the gun. P tells her guns aren't dangerous if used correctly and that she wasn't going to shoot someone because then they'd have gotten no money out of him. Joe still demands the gun and P hands it over. Joe loads a magazine. When she returns to P, she is pouting and says Joe is evil.In a weird coincidence, Joe and P go to a debtor's house and sees a name on the door: Jerôme Morris. Taken aback, Joe suggests P do this one alone. She tells P to make sure nothing is destroyed and nobody is hurt; she should just show herself and offer him a reasonable payment plan. P rings the bell and enters the house with the two henchmen (because a good 15 years have passed, Jerôme is now played by an older actor, not Shia LaBeouf). Joe no longer knows if she still feels love for Jerôme but she definitely experiences a feeling that is far stronger than she would have liked.Joe walks home through the same alley where Seligman first discovered her; she had learned the shortest route from Jerôme's house to her place is the alley. Later that night, P comes home and tells her it went brilliantly and that he made a reasonable payment plan. Joe asks how he looked and P responds, "scared." Joe asks how old he looked and she says, "I don't know ancient." P plants kisses on Joe's neck, then gets naked and jumps into bed with her for some more casual lesbian lovemaking.Joe explains that Jerôme was to pay off his debt in six payments. Every time P goes to his house to collect, Joe is nervous (that they'll become sexually involved) and is restless until P returns. She even begins playing solitaire, just like her mother did, in order to make the hours pass. Each night, she's less assured of P coming home than the night before; she is beginning to feel jealousy and doesn't know if it's the fear of sharing or the fear of losing P. But this unworthy feeling she hadn't felt her whole life (since Joe used to live a life with sex void of love) was now creeping up on her. With the 50-year-old Joe now having romantic feelings for a 19-year-old girl, makes Joe very confused.Some months later, the evening P was to collect the final payment, she doesn't kiss Joe goodbye. This makes Joe suspicious, especially when hours and hours go by. She lays in bed, expecting P to arrive every time she sees a car light in her window. Finally, Joe walks to Jerôme's house. She sees the two henchmen asleep in a car parked out front. Through the window, she sees a naked P in the kitchen of the house drinking from a wine bottle. Jerôme creeps up behind her in an embrace. The two wander out of sight.Joe walks home, having made the decision to flee since she can't stay in this town with P and Jerôme so close by. She begins to head south (because north would require her to turn around and face the town she is abandoning); she has an impulse to climb a large hill that she passes. When she gets to the top, she sees a large deformed oak tree completely alone her soul tree.Joe explains that its said to be difficult to take a person's life but for her, it seemed more difficult not to. She continues, "For a human being, killing is the most natural thing in the world; were created for it." In the flashback, Joe takes the gun she has confiscated from P out of the closet. She crosses back through the alleyway and is stopped short when she hears Jerôme laughing. She rushes back to find Jerôme and P horsing around in the alley. They begin kissing. Jerôme then walks right past Joe who points her gun and pulls the trigger but it fails to go off. She tries again but it still simply clicks. There is a moment when Jerôme realizes that she has attempted to kill him. Joe stands silently, left alone with the awkwardness of having been unsuccessful. After some time, Jerôme decks Joe hard in the face, so she collapses on the ground. P watches on, silently. Without any discussion, Jerôme continues to kick and punch Joe. He turns and looks back at P who responds by pulling down her pants and getting on top of a trashcan. Jerôme approaches and penetrates her three times vaginally (we see it written as 1 + 2 + 3, just like when Jerôme took Joe's virginity) and then five times anally (like in the first film, shown on the screen as 3 + 1, 2, 3, 4, 5). Now we see 3 + 5 on the screen over Joe laying hurt on the ground; the special numerical sequence that tied her to the only man she ever had romantic feelings towards. P saunters over to Joe on the ground and urinates on her. P walks away. Jerôme observes Joe a little longer, sympathetically, and then follows. He is out of earshot but Joe says, "Fill all my holes, please" (what she had said to Jerôme when they first moved in together).The story has now come full circle since this was the condition and location Seligman discovered Joe in. In present day, Joe tells Seligman she still doesn't know why the gun didn't work. She had checked to make sure there were bullets in the magazine and shed taken off the safety; it simply malfunctioned just like Bond's Beretta (hinting again that she is well versed on guns). Seligman points out that you can't shoot a Walther PPK, semi-automatic .38 caliber gun until you rack the gun; you pull and release the sliding mechanism. P hadn't done it because she had no intention of shooting the man during her first assignment. He also pointed out that from Bond films, it must be apparent that you have to rack an automatic pistol. Joe admits he's right and that she's seen it in films a thousand times (hinting that she knew subconsciously that she wasn't going to kill Jerôme and should feel less guilty).Seligman notes that it's morning and the sun is rising (having been up all night listening to Joe's life story). Joe looks out the window; Seligman tells her he can never figure out where it comes from (because his window looks out onto an enclosed alleyway, leaving only a sliver of sunlight). Joe says its beautiful and stares at the spot of sun in the darkness.Cut to a shot of a sunset. Seligman reminds her (and us) that in the beginning, Joe had said her only sin was that she asked more of the sunset. He expresses that this must mean she asks more from life than what is good for her. We see a montage of Joe as a child rubbing against the bathroom tiles, looking up an anatomy book at 10 years old, approaching Jerôme to take her virginity as a young teen. Seligman tells her she was a human being and a woman demanding her rights. He points out that if two men had walked down a train looking for women (like she and B did as teens), nobody would have raised an eyebrow. Or if a man had led the sexual life she had. Or how banal the story of Mrs. H would be if Joe was a man and her conquest was a woman.Seligman explains that when a man leaves his children for desire, we accept it as a shrug but as a woman, she had to take on a burden of guilt that could never alleviated. And all in all, all the blame and guilt piled up over the years became too much for her and she reacted aggressively, almost like a man (lighting cars on fire, etc.), and she fought back against the gender that had been oppressing and mutilating and killing her and billions of women. She points out she wanted to kill a human being flash back to her kissing Jerôme as a young adult, romantically. He points out she didnt kill him; she points out this was only because of a chance event. He says hed call it subconscious resistance; the veil of forgetfulness draped itself over her knowledge of how to rack a gun.Joe says she's too tired to debate. Seligman suggests she lay down and she does. Before she sleeps, she lets Seligman know that, by letting her tell her story, he put her at ease; she adds that, at this moment, her addiction is very clear to her and she's come to the conclusion that even if only one in a million can succeed in mentally and bodily ridding themselves of their sexuality, it is now her goal. Seligman asks her if its a life worth living; she tells him its the only way she can live. She says, "I will start up against all odds just like a deformed tree on a hill. I will master all my stubbornness, my strength, my masculine aggression." Joe also thanks Seligman for being her newest, and maybe first, friend. She says she's happy the shot didn't go off and make her a murderer. She then asks Seligman to leave so she can sleep. He says he'll make sure she isn't disturbed.After Seligman asks Joe if she will contemplate contacting Marcel, they say goodnight to each other and he shuts the door. Joe turns off the light and rolls over to sleep. Moments later, Seligman returns into the darkened room. He walks curiously over to the sleeping Joe. It is revealed Seligman is not wearing pants (although he has on a shirt). He touches his penis and walks over to Joe, preparing to rape her. She sits up in bed, noticing what he's doing. She tells him "NO!" and grabs the gun, racking immediately. The screen turns to black and we hear him tell her, "But you fucked thousands of men." A gunshot is heard. A body falls to the floor. In darkness, we hear Joe put her clothes on and hurriedly rush from the room. Loud footsteps reverberate down the corridor as Joe runs out of the apartment, down the building stairs and out the front door.Charlotte Gainsbourg's cover of the 60s rock song, Hey Joe plays over the end credits.
flashback