Lars Von Trier To Release Hardcore And Softcore Versions Of Next Film, 'Nymphomaniac'

Getting a film past the censors must be difficult when it's titled "Nymphomaniac" and its description in the Guardian is "the erotic life of a woman from infancy to middle age." But Lars Von Trier, the always controversial Danish director of "Dancer in the Dark" and this year's "Melancholia" hopes to pull off such a feat by releasing two versions of his next film--one hardcore and one softcore. The hardcore version will be available on DVD for viewers who want an uncut version of the director's vision; the softcore version will be released theatrically.

Von Trier has worked with explicit sexual content before, as in his 2009 film "Antichrist". His production company, Zentropa Entertainments, supplemented its more mainstream films with pioneering works of female-oriented pornography, such as "Constance" (1998) and "Pink Prison" (1999). For their aesthetic merits, these films were later used as evidence in the case that would legalize pornography in Norway in 2006.

As for his inspiration, Von Trier explained in an interview with the Danish Film Institute that Melancholia DP Manuel Claro "urged me not to fall into the trap that so many aging directors fall into – that the women get younger and younger and nuder and nuder. That's all I needed to hear. I most definitely intend for the women in my films to get younger and younger and nuder and nuder."