Village Voice by Michelle Orange

Nymphomaniac is a jigsaw opus, an extended and generally exquisitely crafted riff. Story, theme, and character (despite Gainsbourg's captivations) bow to von Trier's gamesmanship, which makes his own promiscuities the film's true subject.

IndieWire

At its best, the film doesn't strain for meaning but instead treats all of its intellectualizing as a lark that can be taken seriously but doesn't need to be.

IndieWire by Boyd van Hoeij

At its best, the film doesn't strain for meaning but instead treats all of its intellectualizing as a lark that can be taken seriously but doesn't need to be.

Total Film

Thought-provoking rather than arousing, both films explore the director’s ideas about love, sexuality and loneliness. The organ he seeks to stimulate most is your brain.

The Telegraph by Tim Robey

The point is that you could watch these films for four hours, then spend 14 arguing about them – about whether sex, for vor Trier, is an eternal human mystery, or a cosmic joke at our expense.

Empire by Kim Newman

A rich movie, seductive when abandoning people for falling snow or bleak nature and funny, painful and unflinching when it gets physical.

Variety by Peter Debruge

It’s one thing to declare sex a fact of life and insist that audiences confront their unease at seeing it depicted (or, equally constructive, their intense excitation at its mere mention), but quite another to fashion a fictional woman’s life around nothing but sex. As courageously depicted by Gainsbourg, Jo is ultimately a tragic character.

The Hollywood Reporter by Todd McCarthy

Volume two gets down in ways the first half doesn't, although anything resembling real sensuality remains MIA.

The Guardian by Xan Brooks

It is so laden with highly charged set pieces, so dappled with haunting ideas and bold flights of fancy that it finally achieves a kind of slow-burn transcendence.

Time Out London by Dave Calhoun

We’re never far from Von Trier, and both Skarsgård and Gainsbourg appear to offer different versions of the author himself.

Total Film by Kate Stables

Thought-provoking rather than arousing, both films explore the director’s ideas about love, sexuality and loneliness. The organ he seeks to stimulate most is your brain.

The Dissolve by Noel Murray

With thoughtfulness and passion, von Trier strives to give his audience a high, accompanied by the meaning of the high.

The A.V. Club by A.A. Dowd

Taken as a whole, with volumes one and two in concert, Nymphomaniac looks like nothing less than a career overview, touring each era of the director’s development.

The Playlist

If you thought Vol. I was a brilliant piece of provocation, then Vol. II might disappoint you with its detour into (relative) conventionality, its attacks on arthouse artificiality, and its apparently very different politics. But if you found Vol. I to be as silly as some did, then Vol. II suggests something interesting: Lars von Trier might agree.