Movie Review: The Boss of it All

Lars von Trier is one of cinema's great mavericks – from the psycho-sexual shenanigans of Breaking the Waves to his death row musical Dancer in the Dark, the Danish director delights in confusing and shocking his audience.

He's back with The Boss of it All, and on the face of it, it seems like von Trier's attempt to make something a bit more mainstream. It's a farcical office-based comedy, in which an unemployed actor is hired to pose as the chairman of an IT company in order to sign a lucrative deal. But then again, this is Lars von Trier.

This is definitely a comedy, but von Trier goes out of his way to subvert the genre. The first thing we hear is the director's voice, telling us exactly what kind of film we're going to be watching, and he pops up a bit later to inform us when we're at the halfway point.

He also directs using a process called Automavision, in which a computer randomly chooses the camera angles, meaning that at any point, characters will disappear out of frame and sentences will be cut off in mid-flow. Police Academy this ain't.

The Boss of it All is amusing rather than hilarious, but it does allow von Trier to make some cutting observations about modern office life. The performances are pitched perfectly, from the pretentious actor who views his bit of corporate deceit as a great stage performance, to the sex-mad secretary and violent, seasonally-affected technician.

It's hard to know what to make of it all, given the whole plot centres around a performance, and von Trier reminds his audience throughout that they're watching a frivolous comedy. You half expect the filmmaker to appear on set and yell cut to his robot camera at any point, or the actors to turn to the camera and ask for direction. The Boss of it All might be minor von Trier, but it's also a refreshing change to the weightier concerns of his other movies.