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You could say Lars von Trier is a bit of a control freak. His newest movie, The Boss of it All, is a change from the heavy sledding of his recent political outings, such as Dogville, and von Trier himself turns up at the top of this film to let one know that what follows is a harmless comedy.
So it must be true.
The Boss of it All is indeed a comedy and often a very funny one — at its best a bit like The Office, and at its worst like a deranged Danish version of the 1960s Carry On farces.
Peter Gantzler stars as Ravn, the touchy-feely boss of a small company. He’s always hugging people, and group staff outings are often under discussion. But now the company is for sale, and that has created a problem for Ravn. In the past, Ravn invented a head executive — the veritable boss of it all — so that he could pretend someone else was responsible for any unpleasant company business or decisions.
Now, in order for the sale to go through to a grumpy Icelandic businessman (Fridric Thor Fridriksson), the fictitious boss of it all has to turn up to sign papers. Ravn decides to solve his problem by hiring an actor to pose as the nonexistent boss.
The actor, Kristoffer (Jens Albinus) is very concerned about character and motivation. Also, he’s a bit of an idiot. Before too long, he inhabits his role to the extent that he threatens to upend the whole business deal and ruin Ravn’s relationship with his colleagues.
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To further complicate matters, the actor happens to know the lawyer acting for the Icelandic businessman. Many things are not what they appear to be. And all is resolved through art.
The Boss of it All draws humour from character (and from office politics), and it has plenty of inside jokes about actors and filmmaking. (And jokes about age-old feuds between Denmark and Iceland, which, weirdly, make sense to Canadians.)
Von Trier only interjects a couple of times in the course of the tale. For this film he has used something he calls Automavision, which seems to mean that a computer calls the shots, so to speak. Anyway, it means that The Boss of it All often looks wacky. That’s probably not the correct technical term.
The Boss of it All is in Danish with English subtitles.
(This film is rated 14-A)