Antichrist

The films of Lars von Trier exist in a kind of nether world where cinema and delusions of grandeur merge. I like Antichrist, but I can also see how the buttons von Trier pushes may be too much for the average bear. The film features Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg only, although there are brief appearances from a stunt baby, a fox, a crow and a deer.
The film opens with a beautiful black and white sequence that unwinds in super slow motion. While the couple (Dafoe and Gainsbourg) make love their baby crawls out of his crib and somehow manages to scale an open window and fall to his death. Many times during the movie von Trier slows down the motion to the point that the image is more than static, it's like staring at a painting while hallucinating. von Trier also plays with movie conventions by using old time techniques like body doubles during the sex scene (for an insertion shot).
Antichrist starts like a psycho drama but rapidly escalates in the last part to an out and out thriller. Or maybe Antichrist is a horror film in sheep's clothing. The couple, distraught after the death of their child, retreat to an idyllic cabin in the woods. Only their idea of harmony with nature and a rest cure in the forest is turned on its head.
Throughout Antichrist horrific imagery crops up. You hardly expect a fox to devour itself much less exclaim "Chaos reigns." Likewise the therapeutic dialogue makes you think the whole affair will be a nod to Ingmar Bergman. Surprise, we're in a surreal twilight zone of human manipulation and the couple start hurting each other with abandon. Once again von Trier shows his mastery of genre filmmaking and thus the scissors/clitoris scene looks like something out of a 70s exploitation drive-in movie right down to the cut away shot that would be stock and trade in any B-movie.
Antichrist is anything but boring. The film has a gentle pace that contradicts its subject matter. Sometimes the action flows so hypnotically the effect is trancelike, and perhaps von Trier has found the correct chord structure to his Strindberg Dream Sonata.