For his upcoming film Nymphomaniac, Danish director Lars von Trier is using the genitals of porn actors having intercourse and superimposing them underneath the torsos of the movie's cast during sex scenes.
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter in Cannes, the film's producer Louise Vesth explained: "We shot the actors pretending to have sex and then had the body doubles, who really did have sex, and in post we will digital impose the two. So above the waist it will be the star and the below the waist it will be the doubles."
The same report highlights the extensive time demands to produce these scenes caused delays that prevented Nymphomaniac premiering at the Cannes Film Festival.
Nymphomaniac is a drama and stars Charlotte Gainsbourg, Uma Thurman and Shia LaBeouf amongst others. It reportedly follows the story of a self-diagnosed nymphomaniac (Gainsbourg) who is telling a man the history of her sex life, from teenage years to adulthood.
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Von Trier has used unusual digital techniques in the past. In 2009's notoriously violent Antichrist, a talking fox briefly appeared on screen to utter some choice words. He has also used unsimulated sex before (von Trier, not the fox), notably in
Antichrist, as well as in 1998's The Idiots. Both passed the British Board of Film Classification without the explicit scenes being removed.
As surprising as the inclusion of real sex may be to some, it's not just von Trier pushing this boundary, nor is it uncommon for sex scenes in mainstream movies to be unsimulated. Aside from Antichrist, Michael Winterbottom's 9 Songs included several explicit scenes, including probably the first male ejaculation to feature in a film you could buy on the shelves of Woolworths.
In 2006, Shortbus from Hedwig and the Angry Inch director John Cameron Mitchell included several unsimulated sex scenes, on which he commented: "Some people ask me, 'Couldn't you have told the same story without the explicitness?'. They don't ask whether I could've done Hedwig without the songs. Why not be allowed to use every paint in the paintbox?"
Nymphomanic is expected to premiere in December.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
