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The Boss of it All

Written and directed

by Lars von Trier

Starring Jens Albinus, Peter Gantzler, Louise Mieritz, Iben Hjejle and Mia Lyhne

Classification: 14A

***

Veterans of Lars von Trier film provocations won't be surprised to learn that the creator of Breaking the Waves and the feel-bad musical Dancer in the Dark shot his new film, the comedy The Boss of It All, through a gizmo called Automavision, a computer program that randomly decides when a camera pans, tilts and zooms.

That von Trier has surrendered a filmmaker's job to a machine even makes some sense. The director who once proclaimed a "film should be like a rock in a shoe" has always been more interested in starting fights than making movies.

Automavision also seems an appropriate way to shoot The Boss of It All, a modern business parable that suggests the art of evading corporate responsibility has evolved into a competitive sport.

Our story begins with the wary executive of a Danish communications firm, Ravn (Peter Gantzler) hiring an idle actor (Jens Albinus) to play a fictional international executive, the American boss of it all, who has ordered the business be sold. Actually, Ravn owns and runs the company, but has invented an all-powerful Wizard of Oz figure to avoid the messy job of dealing with workers' emotional needs. Like what happens when a half-dozen loyal employees are fired without warning.

Ravn offers only two stage directions to the actor, Kristoffer: Always say "yes" and correct anyone who employs the word "outsourcing," by hissing, "you mean off-shoring, don't you?"

Simple instructions, and Ravn senses he is in trouble early on, when he assures the actor that his impersonation isn't illegal, only to have Kristoffer sneer, "I don't care if it is or not. I'm an actor. The character is my law, and the script is my courtroom."

Those lines might have been uttered by John Barrymore's overcooked ham-bone, Oscar Jaffe, in Howard Hawks's delicious 1934 screwball comedy, Twentieth Century. And von Trier has great, old-fashioned movie fun here, placing a vain fraud in charge of a company of jittery neurotics, all of whom have been manipulated by shrewdly devised e-mails from Ravn pretending to be their American leader. For instance, a talented secretary (Mia Lyhne) has stayed at the firm because she believes the boss of it all intends to marry her, while a sexpot human-resources leader (Iben Hjejle) has been safely refrigerated with the e-mail story that the very same employer is gay.

The film's frantic pace (the actors speak a mile a minute, in Danish, with miles of unspooling English subtitles) is further proof of von Trier's desire to make a carefree, thirties-style entertainment. The director even appears in the film's prologue, advising us that there will be "no preaching" in The Boss of It All, "just a cozy time."

Of course, he's having us on here. For von Trier's film has a lot to say about professional loyalty, theatre, business and the mad impulse that would have a business leader (or film director) attempt to seduce a company of workers. So did Twentieth Century, come to think of it.

Von Trier's proficiency at the quicksilver business of comedy comes as a surprise, given the grinding seriousness of earlier films like Zentropa and Breaking the Waves, not to mention his famously taking a vow of cinematic chastity in 1995, promising never to use incidental music or shoot on a stage.

Such hair-shirt solemnity begs a satirical response. Arguably, The Boss of It All is just that - von Trier making fun of his own neurosis and pretensions. Late in the film, Ravn criticizes the actor he has chosen to play himself for an ad-lib attempt at destroying his empire. Kristoffer might well be speaking for von Trier when he says he isn't really much of a revolutionary. "I'm better at being irritating on an intuitive level," the actor observes with a weary shrug.

Whatever the case, we should enjoy von Trier's ably performed comedy while we can. The 51-year-old Danish artist recently abandoned moviemaking, explaining he was too depressed to consider being a film boss again.

Here's hoping Lars von Trier's retirement will be brief. Cinema needs meddlesome provocateurs. An occasional stone in the shoe keeps us alert.

The Boss of It All opens in Montreal and in wide release in August.

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