How do you solve a problem like von Trier?

Daft as a brush, and about as visually interesting, for most of its extended duration, Lars von Trier's Dancer in the Dark arrived in Cannes on a wave of anticipation and to prolonged applause, with some viewers reduced to tears. There were others who, like me, found the entire exercise self-indulgent, pointless and even unintentionally funny.

Set in the US, in Washington state in 1965, and filmed almost entirely in Sweden, it features the Icelandic singer-songwriter, Bjork, as Selma, a Czech immigrant who works in a textile factory and lives in a trailer with her 12-year-old son. Suffering from a hereditary disease which is causing her to lose her eyesight, she saves diligently for an operation that could save her son from blindness.

In their spare time, Selma and her close colleague, Kathy (Catherine Deneuve), are involved with an amateur company in rehearsing a production of The Sound of Music in which Selma is cast in the lead as Maria. Meanwhile, the police officer (David Morse), from whom she rents her trailer space, is having financial problems because of his wife's profligate spending, and has his eye on Selma's savings.

Von Trier's film had been touted as his homage to the Hollywood musical. Like many of those musicals, the storyline that links the songs is slight, trite and corny, and this is the only element of the homage which von Trier gets right. The musical routines, which are pitifully few over the course of two hours and 20 minutes, are entirely lacking in either ambition or distinction, and devoid of the razzamatazz which, for example, director Spike Jonze achieved in his three-minute promo for Bjork's It's Oh So Quiet single.

Bjork's performance is embarrassing to watch - although it would be hard to imagine any more experienced actor making much of the threadbare, risible and grossly manipulative screenplay concocted by von Trier.

Further evidence that pop stars should stick to what they know best is provided by Honest, which features three of the four All Saints as thieving sisters in late 1960s London and marks the first feature directed by Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics. Showing out of competition in the official Cannes selection, it also features Peter Facinelli as a handsome American student dabbling in alternative journalism and falling for the ringleader of the sisters (Nicole Appleton). Like Dancer in the Dark, Honest is barely perfunctory in establishing its period setting, is populated by caricatures, and unwisely over-stretches a flimsy scenario.

Back in the main competition, the accomplished French period drama, Les Destinees Sentimentales, marks an assured change of setting and style for the former Cahiers du Cinema critic, Olivier Assayas, after his firmly contemporary films such as the recent, riveting Late August, Early September.

Respectfully adapted by Assayas and Jacques Fieschi from the 1936 novel by Jacques Chardonne, Les Destinees Sentimentales opens in the winter of 1900 and spans most of the next four decades. In a rich, subtle performance for which he must rank as a serious contender for the best actor award at next Sunday night's closing ceremony in Cannes, Charles Berling plays Jean Barnery, a Protestant minister in Charante, who is coming to terms with the failure of his marriage when he falls in love with the spirited young agnostic, Pauline (Emmanuelle Beart).

This new relationship survives the challenges which ensue when he leaves his ministry for a life of relative poverty with Pauline in Switzerland and later when he is drawn back into the family porcelain business and faced with economic upheaval and industrial unrest.

Assayas allows this expansive philosophical drama to unfold at an unhurried pace over three hours, with an astute historical perspective and an impeccable sense of period detail. The broad canvas he depicts makes for enthralling - and at times deeply moving - cinema superbly played by a fine cast in which Berling and Beart are outstanding and Isabelle Huppert is powerfully expressive as Barnery's first wife.

James Ivory's third film from a Henry James book, after The Europeans and The Bostonians, brings the author's last completed novel, The Golden Bowl, to the screen in a dull, unduly protracted movie. Set mostly in England between 1903 and 1909, it deals with impecunious opportunists who marry for money into the same family.

The production values from the Merchant Ivory team are as sumptuous as ever in this inert drama which suffers further from the miscasting of several key roles, and Northam's overwrought Italian accent which proves consistently irritating.

The provocative Japanese director, Nagisa Oshima, returns to feature films after a 14-year-absence, during which he recovered from a stroke, with Gohatto (Taboo), which is set in Kyoto in 1865 and confronts the still topical theme of gays in the military - in this case, among the samurai towards the end of their epoch. The film probes the consequences when a practice shown to be implicitly condoned triggers conflict in the ranks.

It is set off by the recruitment of two young warriors, the androgynous Kano (Ryuhei Matsuda) and the lusty Tashiro (Tadanobu Asano), who is the first of many members of the militia to become besotted with Kano. The consequences are treated with a coyness untypical of Oshima, whose explicit Ai No Corrida caused uproar at Cannes in 1976, and in the early stages, by an anti-cinematic reliance on inter-titles to advance the narrative.

Nevertheless, Gohatto exerts a compelling hold on the viewer in its focus on unexplored areas of the samurai code, the vigorously staged kendo sequences and swordplay, some beautifully stylised imagery, a haunting score by Ryuichi Sakamoto, and a strong cast led by an authoritative Takeshi Kitano, who was a stand-up comedian in 1983 when Oshima gave him his film debut in Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence.

The only Irish film in the official selection at Cannes this year, Not I, directed by Neil Jordan, is the first of the planned 19-film Samuel Beckett Film Project to be screened anywhere. Adhering to the author's instructions, the 14-minute film is formed as an intense series of close-ups on a woman's mouth as she (played by Julianne Moore) delivers a trauma-driven monologue with a hypnotic rhythm that is heightened by seamless editing. The incessant French sub-titles proved an unavoidable distraction.