Cannes Fim Festival needs a scandal film every year. This year, Lars Von Trier’s Antichrist is the one -thanks to a brilliant marketing strategy from the director himself, who knows more than anyone else how to reach his audience (whether professionals or mere viewers). Lars Von Trier has indeed become a commercial brand, a sort of Harry Potter on the arthouse scale with an efficient marketing array that hits the target from production to distribution no matter his limited budget (compared with that of blockbusters’). There lies the Danish filmmaker’s very art: every new production is the chance for him to give the illusion he reinvents cinema whereas he merely savvyly creates the desire of a new cinema by manipulating clichés and references of cinema history with a remarkable sense of timing. If he wasn’t a filmmaker, Lars Von Trier would probably be a coveted advertising executive or image-maker master such as Oliviero Toscani (who designed the Benetton advertising campaigns). For those reasons, each new film by Von Trier definitely is a curiosity (much more than a joy) and a way to get in the face all the ‘dark side’ of arthouse cinema at a given time, vomited by a genius artist, to whom we should wish his thirst for challenge never ends. The film opens in Europe this month. IFC will distribute it in the United States.

Françoise Duru