Self-contained

Donald Clarkeenters the weird world of Lukas Moodysson, acclaimed director of Lilja 4-ever, He's up to his old tricks, showing his new film project, Container, in a fetid, porn-strewn room in London's Institute of Contemporary Arts. Donald Clarkebraves a filthy sofa to talk to him.

FEW artists, after venturing into the avant-garde, show any great enthusiasm for making their way home again. Think of John Coltrane turning My Favourite Things, a tune he once skipped through, into an apocalyptic riot of discordant clamour in his later years. Joyce went from Dubliners to Finnegans Wake. Scott Walker began as a crooner and ended up wailing like an injured baboon while drumming accompanying rhythms on sides of meat. All produced some of their best work in their difficult periods, but their followers could have been forgiven for hoping that - to paraphrase a line from Woody Allen's Stardust Memories - the artists might occasionally revisit the spirit of their "early funny ones". But, sadly, there is rarely any easy route back from the squawk and the circular narrative.

Such thoughts run through my head as I pad about a cramped, dark room littered with newspapers, pornography, rubble, bottle tops, toy animals and. . . Eugh! I don't know what this is, but if I never put my hand in it again it will be too soon. Black-and-white images of a grossly overweight, middle-aged man are projected onto the wall, while an incomprehensible monologue, delivered drably by an anaesthetised female American voice, burbles away in the background. Then there is the smell. The room is filled with a vague, fetid odour that suggests old cats, unwashed lavatories, weeping bedsores and milk left out overnight.

Lukas Moodysson, one of Sweden's most admired young film directors, is just visible through the murk. Knocking over the odd filthy artefact, I pad my way uncertainly through the miasma to join him on a (yes, threadbare) sofa which - my imagination is running away with itself here - just might be stuffed with moth balls and old babydolls' heads.

"I am interested in autism and the Virgin Mary," he says, gesturing towards images that appear to have little to do with either. "I am interested in the way an angel came to her and told her she had Jesus within her. Most people would have said, no. I am also interested in those types of autism where people can't distinguish between what's important and not. They have no filter. I wanted to make something about people who lack that filter." Whatever you say, Lukas.

Moodysson has set up this installation in London's Institute of Contemporary Arts to house a continuous screening of his terrifyingly austere film, Container. The picture presents us with images of a huge man, occasionally dressed in women's clothing, whose inner thoughts may or may not be detailed in the rambling voice-over delivered by the American actress Jena Malone. He puts on a gas mask. She murmurs about Britney. A skinny woman (the person inside the protagonist?) washes pasta in the bath. Jena mutters about Chernobyl.

It would, I suspect, be a mistake to expect Moodysson to clarify what, exactly, is going on.

"There have been a lot of ways of looking at the film," he says, unpromisingly. "I think the most interesting was from an astrologist I met. He liked the film and was interested in it. He actually drew up a whole chart based on it. He reckoned he could tell the sign of the person operating the camera just by looking at the screen. And he was usually right." It was wrong of me to ask, really.

Lukas Moodysson, now 38, made the journey from lucidity to studied incoherence in impressively quick time. His first feature, the provocatively titled Fucking Åmal (known in politer circles as Show Me Love), immediately made his name on its release in 1998. Telling the story of a tentative romance between two schoolgirls, the film won the young director, originally a poet, the ultimate Swedish accolade of an approving nod from Ingmar Bergman. Fucking Åmal went on to take more at the domestic box-office than Titanic, before cleaning up at the Swedish version of the Oscars.

In 2001, Together, a funny, sensitive tale of life in a 1970s commune, became one of the best reviewed films of its year.

Moodysson, whose work seemed humane and accessible, looked like he might become one of those rare directors - Pedro Almodovar is the model - who can open foreign language pictures in mainstream cinemas in English-speaking territories. But the young contrarian was in no mood to compromise.

"I think Together was misunderstood," he says. "I am not saying you all got it wrong or whatever. Maybe I have it all wrong. I am not necessarily complaining, but what surprised me was that people laughed so much during it." Nobody laughed at his next film. Lilja 4-ever, a brilliantly troubling piece of work, which follows the awful life of a teenage prostitute as she makes her way from Russia to Sweden, revealed a bleak world view, barely softened by weird pseudo-Christian imagery.

That film, however, seemed like Mary Poppins when set beside A Hole in my Heart. Featuring labial surgery, soft pornography, and the constant threat of violence, the picture looked as if it had been designed to alienate any potential audience.

Moodysson, shaven headed and quietly spoken, has a habit of provoking those who might otherwise be well disposed towards him. While picking up his Swedish film awards for Fucking Åmal he famously ranted at the crowd, before showing them the finger and storming off in a huff. It is hard to avoid the view that his last two films are part of a deliberate attempt to antagonise hitherto loyal fans.

"I do not make films to provoke," he says. "I have various personal reasons. I think this is a way of saying: film can be this too. It is not just what you think. But I am not trying to provoke the audience. I am not really thinking about the audience at all."

He must, nonetheless, take an interest in how his films are received.

"I never think I can get a big audience. I am more interested in dividing the audience than uniting them." It is worth saying that Container, which didn't get a theatrical release in Ireland, is, in its grim, unforgiving way, often curiously compelling. Malone's voice has an unsettlingly hypnotic effect and the images - skilfully blending the mundane with the fantastic - do get inside your brain and stubbornly refuse to leave. But it makes much more sense in the ICA than it does in a conventional cinema.

Lacking any narrative arc, the scenes only loosely connected, Container is revealed in this environment as being closer to video art than a dramatic feature film. Should you buy the DVD, you may wish to scatter rotting food and rodent stools about the living room before slotting the disc into the machine (if, that is, you need to).

Still, the film - like A Hole in my Heart - will disappoint many who warmed to the humanity of Together and Fucking Åmal. So, is he forever lost to difficulty and obscurity? Will we never see another of his early funny ones? "I think there might be a way back," he almost laughs. "I have enjoyed doing this exhibition. But I am getting tired of this. There was a period where I was just interested in broken things. But I think I would like to get back to something less broken. I would like to get back to something more narrative driven."

Well, given what we now expect of him, a nice little period comedy or an animated film concerning talking mice might count as the ultimate act of contrariness. Let's not hold our breath, though.

Container is currently available on DVD