'Nymphomaniac' :Von Trier's talky porno

THE naughty poster for "Nymphomaniac: Volume 1" has a Brady Bunch-ish arrangement of the film's actors, each wearing a suggestive expression.

But suggestive of what?

I studied the photos, and it's hard to say whether the subjects are in the throes of ecstasy, or doing their taxes.

And some viewers, no doubt, will demand a refund after this new Lars von Trier provocation, purportedly an inquiry into human sexuality featuring a few minutes of (highly explicit) buggery and many more minutes of windbaggery.

It's framed as the narrated memoir of Joe (Charlotte Gainsbourg), found beaten in an alley by an intellectual gent (able to talk of Izaak Walton and Bach with equal erudition) who encourages her to recount her sexual past (which takes four hours - another two hours of the movie is due out in a few weeks).

It turns out to be a preposterously silly, degrading story of a woman trying to understand/explain her mania for sex, and her corresponding lack of belief in love.

Joe (played at this stage by Stacy Martin) makes a grimly insistent departure from virginity at 15, then has a contest with a friend to see who can seduce the most men during a single commuter train ride. As a young adult, she schedules 10 men per day in her apartment. (I use the word preposterous, not because she schedules 10 men per day, but because all of this is said to happen in England. Among the English.)

Joe admits to causing damage with her careless behavior, all for the sake of "pleasure."

But for the most part there's nothing pleasurable about it. Gainsbourg narrates in a flat, uninflected monotone; Martin, during the act, is usually staring blandly into space, like Jane Fonda in "Klute."

And, yet, there are occasionally unexpected, un-von Trier like flashes of humor and vitality. Uma Thurman shows up as a housewife who follows her cheating husband to Joe's flat, walks in with her three kids, and hangs out until Joe shows up as well. Thurman is great in this scene, and if von Trier were ever of a mind to make a truly ground-breaking sitcom, this would be it.

"Nympho" is baffling, silly and full of dreary pronouncements about human nature that feel more like depressive conjecture than truth. "Nympho: Vol. 2" is out April 11 (on VOD already). You'd expect more of the same, but you never know with von Trier - "Melancholia" was a dreary first hour that developed suddenly into a hair-raisingly good horror movie.

Maybe he can find some way to turn a story of compulsive sex into something human, even funny. It's possible, as anyone knows who saw Jennifer Lawrence in "Silver Linings Playbook."