Flailing Vision. - Review - movie review

Bjork acts her heart out, and while it's quite odd to see her cry hysterically and fire a gun, she is never anyone but the winsome, opaque pop star of such established intrigue. Von Trier would have us believe that Selma's quirkiness derives from a nostalgic love of old musicals, but you don't buy it for a second. Deneuve's performance is Catherine Deneuve in method actor--ish quotation marks. A variety of American character actors do their best to seem quintessentially American, while cameos by von Trier regulars like Udo Kier and Stellan Skarsgard keep reminding you that the film was actually shot in Europe without providing any commentary whatsoever on von Trier's mishmashed, uninflected, outsider image of American culture. Everyone just seems lost in the film's jagged, pseudo-honestly visualized drift, and it doesn't take long to realize that nothing the actors could possibly do will keep the astonishingly implausible story line from concluding with an ambiguous pan into the meaningful nothingness of the heavens, this time sans ringing bell. The apparent point? Reality is a cold, cruel place; dreams will get you nowhere, and then you die--and then whatever. In other words, duh, boo-hoo, and maybe wink wink.

One thing you could always say on von Trier's behalf is that he's a nervy artist with a lot of visual flair--a bona fide enfant terrible. But with Dancer in the Dark he has accidentally exposed a huge problem in his work overall, which may help viewers exorcise the haunting, elusive quality that gave his earlier films their genius-esque vibe. The guy has no heart, and he was very lucky that Breaking the Waves' Emily Watson has such a big, uncontainable one. The French are welcome to differ, but von Trier might be wise to leave plaintive realism to someone who cares (say, Dogma teammate Thomas Vinterberg) and stick to doing what he evidently does best--pulling new wool over the wool that he has already pulled over our eyes.

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