In May, mad Danish director Lars von Trier won the Palme d'Or for best film at the Cannes Film Festival with Dancer In The Dark.

The film is a fraud.

The award is ludicrous.

Von Trier, infamous for his foul humour and crazy antics but capable of works of genius such as Europa and the mini-series The Kingdom, makes a mockery of his actors and his audience in Dancer In The Dark.

The film, now getting its doomed commercial release, is set in the U.S. in the 1950s and plays in the English language. But any connection to America is purely coincidental (and it was shot in Europe because von Trier's pathological fear of flying prevents him from crossing the Atlantic).

Dancer In The Dark is unlike any film you've ever seen. It is a melodramatic musical-tragedy about factory workers, a corrupt cop, a bloody murder and the prison gallows.

The movie co-stars Icelandic pop songstress Bjoerk (who won the best actress prize in Cannes and promptly announced her retirement from acting) and Catherine Deneuve, the icy French princess of cinema who is slumming it as a worker drone. The forlorn Bjoerk is supposed to be a Czech immigrant, but her accent places her in the twilight zone; Deneuve is a French immigrant and sounds it.

They play the primary factory workers, toiling in a plant that stamps out metal basins. Unfortunately, Bjoerk's character is going blind. She also day-dreams about American movie musicals, such as The Sound Of Music, and is cast in a local amateur production now in rehearsal.

All of which means Bjoerk is incompetent and in danger of wrecking her stamping machine. When she day-dreams, the entire factory staff breaks out in choreographed, Bob Fosse-like dance numbers with syncopated factory noises serving as the basis for the music.

This is obviously no Sound Of Music or An American In Paris or Cabaret or West Side Story -- or any other great American musical that actually works in suspending the disbelief that comes when people suddenly stop what they're doing and break out in song and dance.

In von Trier's fake American factory world, they look like the idiots from his last film, The Idiots. In addition, he and famed cinematographer Robby Mueller shot it on digital film, which means Dancer In The Dark plays so murky and grainy, it's lousy and difficult to watch. The hand-held, herky-jerky camera style has no purpose other than to satisfy von Trier's indulgence.

But, obviously, Dancer In The Dark has its fans. It did win over Luc Besson's jury at Cannes. It generated love as well as hatred from international critics. Count me in the latter group.

(This film is rated AA)

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