for this week’s Tribune : ‘Antichrist’ and ‘Just Another Love Story’ [both 6/10]

Published on: July 24th, 2009

Antichrist
Director: Lars Von Trier

Just Another Love Story
Director: Ole Bornedal

"There were people in Denmark who said,  'This film is too much.' And I said yes, it's too much, but I think there's too little of too much. I want much more too much. I wanted to make an emotional action movie."
   As the reader may have guessed, this comment was made by a certain Danish director whose latest film obtains UK release this week. But while it's just the kind of bold statement one associates with world-cinema's most reliably provocative provocateur Lars Von Trier – he of current Antichrist infamy – it's actually a quotation from his countryman Ole Bornedal, speaking in 2002 about his movie I Am Dina.
   Bornedal – best known for making two versions of dark thriller Nightwatch (the domestic original in 1994, and an ill-starred 1997 Hollywood remake) – has never enjoyed a fraction of the profile or acclaim that Von Trier has consistently attracted since his 1984 debut The Element of Crime. And his 2007 picture Just Another Love Story (like I Am Dina, a deliberately excessive example of "an emotional action movie") will be much harder to track down on its (belated) UK release than Antichrist. But that discrepancy is more a function of Von Trier's ever-resourceful manipulation of media-hype than the relative merits of the two films – indeed, on balance Just Another Love Story is perhaps marginally the more worthwhile of the two.
   The opening and closing credits trumpet, with Von Trieristic bravado, that this is "a film by Bornedal." And the movie itself does conduct itself with a certain swaggering self-consciousness – all the better to sock over a plot which consists of one melodramatic twist after another. Indeed, so convoluted and unlikely is this moody, darkly-comic thriller that it soon becomes apparent that we're in a very post-modern kind of neo-noir.
   Taken on those terms, there's much to enjoy here – not least Dan Lautsten's gritty-glossy cinematography: he shot the good-looking pair Brotherhood of the Wolf and Silent Hill for director Christoph Gans. There's also the editing by Anders Villadsen, who juggles what amounts to three separate time-lines with significant aplomb. In addition, the schlubby protagonist, crime-scene photographer Jonas (Anders W Berthelsen) is such a weak-willed patsy it's amusing to see how quickly and hopelessly he gets himself ensnared in a web of deceit and false identity.
   A family-man who's clearly fed up with his lot, Jonas spots a possible escape-route after he's involved in a (spectacularly-staged) car-crash. Visiting one of the injured parties – Julia (Rebecka Hemse), an attractive but neurotic young woman who, as the audience knows, has a rather colourful past – in hospital, Jonas pretends to be her boyfriend, Sebastian. When Julia comes to, she's conveniently near-blind and amnesiac. Wildly implausible complications rapidly ensue in a crescendo which peaks with the semi-unexpected arrival on the scene of the real Sebastian (Nikolaj Lie Kaas, a fine performer, albeit one who's reached Depardieu-like levels of ubiquity within the Danish film industry.)
   By this stage the audience is either with Bornedal or they're not: suspension of disbelief is a key factor in Just Another Love Story's effectiveness, because as soon as the plot is exposed to rational scrutiny the whole thing quickly disintegrates. Indeed, any attempt at genuine emotion is instantly undercut by the fundamental ludicrousness of what befalls the hapless Jonas. Better to just sit back and appreciate the whole thing as an elaborate, knowingly nudge-nudge-wink-wink riff on genre conventions: a bumpy ride indeed, but one that indulgent and patient passengers will ultimately reckon was worth the journey.
   And "a bumpy ride" is of course also on offer via Antichrist – albeit not quite the rollercoaster  experience one might expect from the advance publicity. Indeed, while absolutely nobody's idea of a walk in the park – with its explicit scenes of copulation, genital mutilation and grisly assault - it isn't so hideously gruelling or shockingly intense as you'd guess from the febrile dispatches resulting from its Cannes world-premiere in May.
   Rather, while this is a very confrontational, transgressive piece of cinema, it would be a mistake to reject it as mere extremity for extremity's sake. The story sees a married couple (Charlotte Gainsbourg and Willem Dafoe), traumatised by the accidental death of their young son, retreating to a remote cabin in a deep forest. The wife is much more obviously shaken by events than the husband – a psychotherapist who, contrary to the ethics of his profession, decides to take his spouse as his latest "patient." His remedy involves forcing her to confront her darkest fears, but this only serves to send her further into psychosis - and, ultimately, extreme violence…
   A heady mix of Bergman, Nietzsche, Tarkovsky, Carl Theodore Dreyer's Day of Wrath and Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now - among many other literary, cinematic and artistic touchstones – Antichrist amply supports Von Trier's description of how its preparation and execution were intended as therapy to help him out of a deep depression. There's the definite feeling at key junctures that certain dark obsessions and neuroses are being worked through via the medium of celluloid – though the prospect that the movie could somehow operate as a catharsis for Von Trier is hampered by the fact that he's also making a belated segue into what is for him an entirely new genre.
   The horror movie is, however, much harder to pull off than it may appear – and Von Trier's awkward embrace of some of its more extreme tropes is reminiscent of what happened when Stanley Kubrick made The Shining*. Antichrist might have worked as a "straight" horrror – or could have have been more satisfying and productive if it had concentrated, David Lynch-style on plumbing the darker recesses of Von Trier's own fears and insecurities. As it is, it tries to do both things – with predictably compromised, uneven results.

Neil Young
12th July, 2009
written for the 22nd July edition of Tribune magazine



ANTICHRIST : [6/10] : Denmark (Den/Ger/Swe/Ity/Fr/Pol) 2009 : Lars VON TRIER : 109m (BBFC) : seen at Dagmar Teatret cinema, Copenhagen, 29th May 2009 – public show (paid 65kr =  £7.63 approx). original review.

JUST ANOTHER LOVE STORY  : [6/10] : Denmark 2007 : Ole BORNEDAL : 104m (BBFC) : seen at Capitol cinema, Gothenburg, 25th January 2008 (Gothenburg Film Festival) – jury screening. original review.

* Just to clarify: I like The Shining a lot; but that doesn't mean Kubrick had any clue about the horror genre when he made it.

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