MANDERLAY

Directed by Lars von Trier. Starring Bryce Dallas Howard, Isaach De Bankolé, Danny Glover, Willem Dafoe, Michael Abiteboul, Lauren Bacall, Jeremy Davies, Chloë Sevigny, Udo Kier Club, IFI, Dublin, 139 min

IN A recent interview, Lars von Trier compared Manderlay and its predecessor, Dogville, to the early albums of Queen. His point, insofar as he had one, was that these harsh Brechtian fables, filmed in stark barns utilising painted floor-plans as sets, employed, to quote a legend displayed on Sheer Heart Attack and A Night at the Opera, "no synthesisers".

Lars was speaking metaphorically. One might also argue that, like Bohemian Rhapsody, the films have the ability to nauseate as many people as they delight.

Of course, von Trier actively courts the audience's displeasure. It is extraordinary that some critics still object to the naive criticisms made of the United States in Dogville on the basis that the director has never visited the country. Lars has made it clear that he began this projected trilogy (now, it seems, to remain a diptych) precisely because he has never been to America. Object to that - or his repeated degradation of women or, here, his dubious racial politics - and you are playing directly into his hands.

For all the director's provocation, Dogville had an irresistible narrative momentum. Try as he might to alienate us, von Trier couldn't quite repress his considerable talents as a storyteller. With Manderlay, however, he appears to have redoubled his efforts towards estranging the viewer. Though the narration by John Hurt is as seductive as ever, and Bryce Dallas Howard is a more compelling lead than the glacial Nicole Kidman, the dry, theoretical tone of the piece allows no real drama to develop.

The picture begins with Grace, the heroine of Dogville, fleeing across the southern states with her father (Willem Dafoe) and his gangster associates. They happen upon the titular estate where they discover that, some 70 years after emancipation, black workers are still being treated as slaves. When the farm's owner (Lauren Bacall) passes on, Grace, morally self righteous in the manner of a liberal film star in Team America: World Police, sets about freeing the workers and teaching them the ways of democracy.

But things don't work out as planned. The new, free Americans prove as greedy and venal as their former masters. Grace begins having Mandingo fantasies involving naked black men. Meanwhile conservatives and liberals in the audience become equally nervy.

As we have seen, it's hardly worth getting annoyed at the director's shock tactics. And his political allegories - the film was, he says, written before the Iraq occupation went so desperately awry - are so vague and ambiguous they defy analysis.

After the partial success of Dogville, it is, however, fair to ask where the sense of mounting horror and dread has gone. The film seems, for the most part, to be composed of town meetings and labour negotiations. A frightening enough prospect, I grant you, though not quite as horrifying as the John Deacon numbers on A Night at the Opera. Donald Clarke