Antichrist (18) **
SHOWING only at Cineworld Broad Street, this is the most controversial film since The Passion of The Christ five years ago.
The British Board of Film Classification – which used four words to describe the effects the PG-rated Coraline might have on unsuspecting children – was moved to give a 600-word explanation of why it has certified it at all.A grieving couple (played by Jane Birkin’s daughter Charlotte Gainsbourg and Willem Dafoe) retreat to a remote cabin and end up either torturing each other or themselves. Breaking the Waves’ director Lars Von Trier wrote the script after being depressed to ‘test if I would ever make another film...’ He offers some occasionally insightful explorations of grief which are captured by Oxford-born cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle (28 Days Later / Last King of Scotland / Slumdog Millionaire). But even Von Trier admits: ‘Scenes were added for no reason (and) images were composed free of logic or dramatic thinking’.
The film’s box office in France has been poor despite the controversial subject matter – the only reason why some people will see it when they could be watching either Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes From a Marriage or Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now, both of which were made in 1973.
While Von Trier takes self-harming to unpleasant extremes in a film which the BBFC rightly advises contains ‘real sex with penetration, masturbation, genital mutilation and self-mutilation’ – not forgetting the ejaculation of bloody semen! – Dafoe often looks like Arnold Schwarzenegger and at one point Miss Gainsbourg bears an uncanny resemblance to Edwina Currie. If you can avoid sinking into depression, Antichrist might just serve to remind you that this summer’s weather isn’t too bad after all.
