His Royal Majesty James of House Cameron’s review published on Letterboxd:
Young bones groan
And the rocks below say :
"Throw your white body down !"
Following the lighter A-side that was Volume I, Nymphomaniac: Volume II is the jarring conclusion to Lars Von Trier's epic about a woman in struggle with herself and the World. Joe, now older and in a relationship, finds it harder and harder to achieve sexual climax, a frustration that builds up, driving her further and further away from the little human connection she had managed to secure up until this point. The darkness behind all the playful frolicing that was only hinted at in the first half has now caught up to the main character and the whole film captures her inability to deal with it properly.
Beneath the obvious appeal of the naked female from and the games that come with it, Joe's tale is a tragic one. Many people will dismiss her character on the grounds of von Trier's need of showing every inch of skin with a great deal of detail, not withstanding what happens after the clothes come off. The main character is the director's way of paying respect to women, their bodies and their desires as she is, deep down, a woman shackled by the need to fulfill a desire, a cathartic moment where she once found freedom and joy that today gets harder and harder to attain. The imagery is but another tool in the shed that is there not to exploit but to glorify, as most acts one would deem "obscene" or "shocking" are the ones where Joe usually is in her own personal Nirvana or attempting to reach said state.
The dark path it takes is all about making a statement. Joe opens her mouth and all you can hear is Lars von Trier's words making a statement. There was a big chance some of the statements made would grant the speaker the status of "persona non grata" virtually everywhere in the known universe, especially someone who hasn't had a healthy relationship with the media and public opinion, but the director's opinions are carefully worded and he manages to express bold things without sounding offensive or ignorant. In one master stroke, he combines the character's background with his own and gets to sit in the back while watching people deal with it. It didn't become apparent until the second half but Joe's personal link with her creator manages to service them both for the greater good.
The script, however poignant, has a noticeable problem in terms of pacing that first part didn't have even when burdened with character introductions and so forth. With the exception of K's story arc, the films feels overstretched, plagued with long pieces of dialogue that hammer the same philosophy again and again when the message was quite clear at first. Somehow, somewhere, the script got infected with LOTR-itis which afflicted it with 169 endings whereas only one, definitive statement was needed to drive the whole point home. With such great quality behind its storytelling, it creates a muddy path for the pacing that was totally uncalled for and that turned a potentially great experience into a mere good one.
The ending scene itself was also uncalled for, to the point where it got some laughs from some more immature patrons at my screening. Personally, I think it totally destroyed the point behind one of the characters in question and served, yet again, to shove the already clear notion of feminism down our throats. The impression I get from the choice of insistence before subtlety is that, by the end, even Lars von Trier didn't believe in the audience's ability to get what he was saying and so decided to condescend his way into a conclusion. I couldn't help but feel belittled.