Lars von Trier, who invented the minimalist film movement Dogme, followed up his own Dogme film with a musical. It's a sign that the ideas of the movement sprung from a general interest in how films are made, rather than a commitment to minimalism per se; and the same thing can also be seen in Thomas Vinterberg's post-Dogme film 'It's All About Love', which does have a certain minimalist aesthetic, but which is made with all of the tools available to the modern film-maker that the Dogme movement so consciously abandoned. And in spite of it's dreadfully uninspiring title, it turns out to be an interesting movie: stylised, beautifully constructed, and engagingly mysterious. Vinterberg proves himself to be a master of mood, creating scenes of a tender, haunting beauty but backed by a vague sense of menace. But judged purely as a thriller, the film is less good, because the menace and mystery never coalesce into something more certain, what we have here is images of a storyline, but no real story: things happen in sequence, and sometimes we are allowed to understand why, but it's unclear that there is a larger whole waiting to be discovered. Instead, we are presented with the illusion of fragments, beautifully executed (and Claire Daines in particular plays her role well), but without any necessary (visible or invisible) connectedness. The overall result could not be called great; but it is ambitious, distinctive, and directed with no little skill.
Review of It's All About Love
