More depressing than Breaking The Waves, more idiotic than The Idiots and more turgid than Dancer in the Dark, Dogville may be the Lars von Trier movie to end them all (though we fear he probably has several more up his sleeve). While his film-making debut Waves at least had the benefit of narrative coherence and a melodramatic punch, von Trier’s subsequent work has reached further and further up his own posterior, to the point where it is now utterly beyond parody, as becomes instantly apparent within the very first frame of Dogville.

Truly astonishing to behold, the film (for want of a more appropriate description) is set entirely on a stage. Not a proper stage, either: it’s one of these practically prop-free, Nativity-play type affairs – because of course, Lars has decided to go all Brechtian in the name of art. To this end, Dogville features a bunch of apparently reputable actors flitting around said stage and pretending to knock on imaginary doors, which they proceed to pretend to open and close for three hours. That’s 3 (THREE), as the BBC videoprinter used to say at full-time on Saturdays.

Meanwhile, the ‘action’ sees Nicole Kidman arriving unknown and unannounced in a small town, seeking refuge with the collective of rustic Depression-era oafs who live there, and generally poncing around to no discernible effect for the three hours. Obviously, this being a von Trier movie, you can set your watch for the rape scene, which duly arrives about halfway in (it’s very difficult to tell – one loses all sense of time and indeed space after the first couple of scenes).

While more enlightened critics have noted that Dogville has important points to make about exploitation, degredation, self-righteousness and self-serving iniquity, Moviehouse must urge caution about whether such treasures are really worth the three-hour wait. We can’t wait for the Director’s Cut Deluxe Edition DVD with extra unseen footage, though.