Would it be good? Would it be folly? Could it deliver on such enormous expectations? Well, yes and no. Inevitably, the film has divided opinion, although some critics are already tipping it as the eventual winner of the Palme d’or. Filmed entirely in one near-barren soundstage, where the tiny town of Dogville is marked on the ground with white lines and words—Elm Street, Thomas Edison’s house, Old Mine—and adorned by a bare minimum of props, von Trier’s film has a stripped-back theatrical feel to it, and indeed in some respects, it is less a movie than filmed theater. (Despite cinematic touches such as overhead shots and a few optical effects, this could easily be translated almost directly to the stage.)

Von Trier says he’s been reading a lot of Faulkner and Steinbeck lately, and his story is a fusion of influences literary, cinematic (Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon), and musical (Brecht’s Threepenny Opera). Stylistically, he took his inspiration from a televised version of Nicholas Nickleby by the Royal Shakespeare Company that he saw on Danish TV. Set in the Rocky Mountains in the 1930s, Dogville is told in nine chapters and a prologue; it begins with Kidman’s Grace, a glamorous fugitive, seeking refuge from a group of gangsters in Dogville. Initially scared of Grace’s presence, Tom (Bettany), an aspiring philosopher, convinces the townsfolk that she should stay, and she agrees to repay their hospitality with work. However, it’s not long before the community turns on her and Grace is forced to suffer the kind of sexual and physical torture that's been inflicted on almost all of von Trier’s female characters. Dogville is another of the audacious and imaginative experiments that we’ve come to expect from von Trier—bold, provocative, idiosyncratic, challenging, difficult, compelling—although at almost three hours, it could have done with some cutting. Moreover, some have labeled the film as anti-American; though it’s certainly critical of the United States, von Trier, who has never been to America, says it’s not meant to be a comment on the United States as it exists, rather a comment on how America is in his head.

Screening alongside Dogville in the main competition were Francois Ozon’s intriguing English-language debut Swimming Pool, which mixes a mystery and a view of the creative process and stars Charlotte Rampling as an uptight British crime writer and Ludivine Sagnier as the sexually aggressive, bikini-clad daughter of her publisher; Gus Van Sant’s controversial Elephant; and Hector Babenco’s slightly disappointing Carandiru.

Van Sant’s film, which tells of a Columbine-style massacre, was shot in an improvisational style with mostly nonactors and an observational narrative that repeats itself to paint a picture of high school life in all its everyday ordinariness. The film has frustrated several critics here because Van Sant doesn’t offer any real insights into the whys—the two teenaged boys involved in the killings watch a Hitler documentary, play violent video games and Beethoven on the piano, and are seen kissing in the shower together; the answer seems to be that they’re gay Nazis—but the overall effect is still powerful and poetic. Early on, the kids are fleetingly glimpsed walking into school decked out in military garb and carrying weapons, and there's an increasingly uncomfortable, inexorable feeling of dread that builds as film progresses, as you sit and wait for the killing to begin.

There’s more murder in Carandiru, which is based on a non-fiction book written by an AIDS doctor who spent 12 years working in a San Paolo prison. A massive box office hit in its native Brazil, Carandiru is something of a return to form for Babenco, who spent most of the last decade battling cancer, but while the typical scenes of violence inherent in any prison drama are present, including shots of dirty needles piercing veins in grim close-up, it lacks the edge, grittiness, and visceral nature that made last year’s City Of God or indeed Babenco’s earlier Pixote so scintillating. Carandiru substitutes an almost theatrical air for gritty realism, with prisoners relating their fanciful stories of crimes and punishments to Luiz Carlos Vasconcelos’s doctor one by one, which are then revealed in flashback.

More Cannes Coverage:
Weekend Wrap-Up:
One of the joys of Cannes is uncovering those movies that don’t come equipped with a multi-million promotional budget but yet still hope to make a splash.
Day Two:
The biggest splash was made by The Matrix Reloaded which screened on Thursday night on the back of some mixed stateside reviews.
Day One:
The 56th Cannes Film Festival opened on Wednesday with Fanfan Le Tulipe, an ever-so-disappointing period piece starring Vincent Perez and Penelope Cruz.