A lmost everything about Dancer in the Dark is shamelessly ludicrous. Clearly he is in full provocateur mode, practically daring us to hate his movie.
Every scene goes for broke.
And while some have undeniable power, most of them fall flat. The reason for this, I suspect, is because Selma s suffering becomes the point of the movie, a point which von Trier takes too far. But the audience at the New York Film Festival, which Dancer opened on September 22nd, will be less lenient. They will probably accept his dare and hold him accountable for this shameless exercise in exploitation. Those viewers who ve seen von Trier s Breaking the Waves will experience a weird form of deja-vu.