Behold the first still released from Lars von Trier's Nymphomaniac which will star Charlotte Gainsbourg (in her third collaboration with the director following Antichrist & Melancholia). These are the thoughts I had in actual chronological order...
• That's a really odd choice for a first still. It's a tremendously vague tease but better this than those movies which release "first looks!" that might as well be headshots of the actors, they're so generic.
• Remember when Laura Dern got high from inhaling glue in paper bags in Citizen Ruth?
• If that were Michelle Pfeiffer and this were 1992, a bunch of cats could run into frame and resurrect this poor soul.
• Who is this poor soul?
• This doesn't look as fun as the movie's title. Bleak it looks.
• If this movie is as good as The Idiots (1998), my vote for the single most underappreciated von Trier marvel, I will want to have sex with it.
• Did you see Smashed? That scene where Mary Elisabeth Winstead accidentally smoked crack during a Lost Weekend really threw me.
• Will this movie have a mix of pathos and humor like many of von Trier's films or will it be an across the board icky provocation like Manderlay or Antichrist.
• Oh, I actually just looked up the plot synopsis on IMDb which suggestes that this is an image of Charlotte from perhaps the opening scene of the movie:
A self-diagnosed nymphomaniac recounts her erotic experiences to the man who saved her after a beating.
• Interesting cast I think: Returning von Trier alum Charlotte herself plus Jens Albinus, Udo Kier, Jesper Christensen, Stellan Skarsgård and Charlotte's Antichrist hubbie Willem Dafoe; Scandinavian von Trier Virgins: Shanti Roney (who was marvelous in a sexually charged uncomfortable scene in Applause) and international actress Connie Nielsen who turns it out when a director challenges her (i.e. infrequently but enough to make you long for the next time); People we most hope have sex very naked and super often in the movie even if its uncomfortably von Trierian sex: Jamie Bell & Uma Thurman; Stunt Casting: Christian Slater (as Charlotte's father?!) and Shia Labeouf who one assumes wanted to get naked and artsy again.
p.s. here's a second official image, less vague, less safe for work.