Antichrist (18)

Alison Rowat's Review

Antichrist’s reputation precedes it like a stink from a blocked drain. You’ll have heard about the outcry in Cannes at the genital mutilation scenes, and tuned into the hum over whether Lars von Trier’s picture is the work of the devil or a heavenly cry from a misunderstood genius. It is neither.

Antichrist, plain and simple, is an astonishingly ill-judged film that relies on sensationalism to get its points across. It’s the cinematic equivalent of the bearded lady, a freak show wearing arthouse clothes.

Deliberately provocative, gobsmackingly tedious, juvenile and misogynistic, its puddle-like intellectual depth is only surpassed by its towering pretentiousness.

The story opens in the home of characters named only in the credits as “he” and “she”. Played by Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg, the therapist and his wife are getting it on in the shower of their fabulously chic home.

A soprano’s voice soars as the camera, shooting in tasteful black and white, scans the couple’s writhing bodies.

While they continue their lovemaking session in the bedroom, their baby son is passing through the world’s worst child safety gate, climbing up to an open window and falling oh so artistically to his death.

Thus the tasteless tone is set. The couple retreat to a cottage in the Eden woods to grieve over their loss. It is here that events take a turn for the certifiable.

She develops a voracious, highly unlikely, appetite for sex and becomes obsessed with the medieval punishment of wrongdoing women. Dafoe, meanwhile, divides his time between going for gold in the sexual Olympics and counselling his increasingly disconnected wife.

The story, heavy with Old Testament overtones, moves the couple through the stages of loss - grief, pain, despair.

After two hours, and a talking fox along the way, Mr von Trier is ready for those notorious close-ups of “she” meting out punishment, not least on herself with a rusty pair of scissors. No detail is spared. Despite the furore at Cannes, or perhaps because of it, Gainsbourg won the best actress award. She deserved a prize, as does anyone who willingly sits through this codswallop trying to divine a deeper meaning from its goings on.

Von Trier has made a career out of trying the patience of audiences. With Antichrist, many may find their forbearance finally snaps.

Paul Greenwood's Review

Antichrist has been courting controversy and column inches ever since it was simultaneously lauded and booed at the Cannes Film Festival back in May.

Danish director Lars von Trier has variously faced accusations that the film is either a misogynist tract or that he is just having a joke at the audience’s expense.

Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg play a husband and wife credited only as He and She. The film announces itself as self-consciously studenty and symbolic in an arty black and white, super slo-mo prologue which sees their young son fall to his death from a window while they make love.

He is a therapist who comes up with various ideas on how She should be treated for her ensuing deep depression, as She goes through agonies while accusing him of not caring.

As their arguments mount, they decide to retreat to a cabin in the woods to try to start coping better. But that's when the real trouble starts.

Antichrist achieves a haunting beauty through its creamy, soft-focus photography, but it's sedately paced to the point of boredom, with an awful lot of blank stretches.

As an examination of grief and guilt, it certainly has a raw power and as a display of naked emotion from Gainsbourg, who won the best actress prize at Cannes, it certainly packs a punch.

But let's not kid ourselves - the only reason this film is reaching a cinema audience beyond the usual art circuit is because of its lurid content.

Stirring up controversy is the only way to ensure people turn up to an otherwise desperately tedious melodrama. And yes, the scenes involved are among the most graphic ever inflicted on a mainstream audience, but that doesn't mean they're worth watching. With its needlessly explicit sex and scenes of mutilation, it's grotesque without ever managing to be bleak. We're supposed to be feeling the pain of this couple, but instead it collapses into outright ridiculousness.

By the time the talking fox turns up, you'll either be mesmerised or have given up the ghost entirely. Art-house masterpiece or pretentious guff?