It’s not Dogme but it’s still got bite.

This film has no locations, just a black space inside a warehouse where settings are delineated by white lines on the floor. There are chapter headings and a bookish voice-over, courtesy of John Hurt commentating on the action in crusty Radio 4 English. It’s filmed like a stage play and frequently begs the question, is this even cinema?

Rest easy, though. Dogville is the most daring piece of arty high jinks you’ll be lucky enough to sit through this year. And it more than confirms director Lars von Trier’s standing as film’s leading intellectual provocateur. Crudely billed as the film where Nicole Kidman gets raped by an entire town, Dogville is the story of a little American microcosm that’s rotten to the core. It certainly gives the actress ample opportunity to prove she really is one of the best things happening on screen at the moment.

Escaping gunfire, Kidman’s character Grace stumbles into Dogville, where she meets Tom, the Depression-era town’s resident philosopher and would-be writer. He decides Grace will be a fine way to unlock the goodness in the narrow-minded townsfolk, and she sets out to make friends by doing people’s chores. Pretty soon, though, she’s caught in a grinding exploitative system and Tom’s moral doctrines are being twisted to justify human brutality.

But just as the first Dogville resident to show his teeth - a young boy who demands a spanking - barks “it’s got to be hard or it isn’t punishment”, Grace herself is meekly consenting: “I must be punished.” There’s an S&M frisson - you know Nicole’s going to end up in a metal dog collar at some point – that keeps the drama salaciously ticking along, while making the audience horribly complicit in her degradation. The capitalist system is unveiled as an orgiastic charnel house, but also as a natural extension of the grubbiest impulses of the human animal. (9/10) Skye Sherwin 13 February 04

Dogville, on selected release 13 February 04.

useful link: dogville official site