Danish director Thomas Vinterberg turns his back on the stripped-down realism of Dogme 95 for his first English-language feature. The polar opposite of its predecessor, Festen, this film is a lavishly created sci-fi love story that plays like a surreal fairy tale. Joaquin Phoenix and Claire Danes make handsome leads as a young married couple who decide to split after spending several years apart. But when Phoenix pays a flying visit to New York so that ice-skating superstar Danes can sign their divorce papers, he realises that his wife's celebrity lifestyle is not what it seems. Given the tale's ultimate rejection of superficiality and deceit, it's ironic that Vinterberg has crafted a picture that's entirely governed by outward appearance. Stylistically it looks gorgeous, but this cool sophistication comes at the expense of coherent plot development. With its strangely detached performances and baffling conclusion, the movie is just too weird to really work. Yet despite the apparent pretentiousness, it's still an intriguing curio.