The man who blows hot air into art house
Lars Von Trier is distinctly odd. If you consider that Von Trier (he added the 'Von' himself) is the film world's most famous travel-phobe since the passing of Stanley Kubrick, it is quite remarkable that the Danish director of the worldwide art-house smash hit Breaking The Waves is in France to conduct this interview at all.
He should be in Copenhagen where his production company is making pornographic films for the female market ('lots of garages and oil', he notes). Or in America, where - if he manages to make it there because he is afraid of planes, trains, cars, buses, boats and bikes - the 42-year-old Von Trier is slated to make a self-scripted musical starring Icelandic rock icon Bjork. Even though he cannot write music.
Von Trier failed to nab the coveted Palme D'Or at Cannes for Breaking The Waves - the heartbreaking Scottish-set drama which launched an unknown Emily Watson's career - so he got together with fellow Danish director Thomas Vinterberg (The Party) to launch the nutty Dogma '95, in which they declared a film-maker's 'vow of chastity'.
Among their declared intentions: not to use props or sets or a score in their films, to employ only a handheld camera using colour stock, and to ensure the movies always take place in the here-and-now. He then took four days to write a script for The Idiots in which a group of Copenhagen bourgeoisie take to the countryside and pretend to be mentally handicapped, culminating in an orgy and an extremely long 'penetration' shot.
Oh no, Von Trier is not your average Hollywood action film-maker-for-hire. If you add to the mix that he is Denmark's equivalent of Robin Williams, in that he left his wife mid-pregnancy for the nanny, and that he is renowned throughout his native land for two very strange Twin Peaks-y TV series called Kingdom I and II which were eventually released as feature films, then you have a somewhat intriguing character.
Until you finally meet him, that is. Von Trier is, despite the rumour-mill which has surrounded his constant public non-appearances since the success of Europa in 1991, disappointingly normal in the flesh. He does not always make sense - nor does The Idiots - but despite some lengthy pauses and the fact that he takes himself extremely seriously, Von Trier is sweet in a blithely contradictory way. He is blase about The Idiots, for example, claiming there is nothing really to talk about.
'I would say this film is a creation that happened in the second that I shot it. And that is where all the work lies. Other films that I have done have been much better composed before shooting, and that means you have quite a lot to say about them, but this film is something that comes from the moment I shot it, so what can you say about that?' OK, then, let us talk about why you decided to include that long and shocking 'penetration' shot in a non-pornographic film? 'Why is penetration important?' he clips. 'If you haven't tried penetration, then I won't accept the question.' This heralds a long and uncomfortable pause which Von Trier eventually - and thankfully - breaks.