Melancholia (Cannes 2011)

"No more happy endings," director Lars Von Trier cheekily promised in the run up to Melancholia. Given that the ex-Dogme 95 man's films have previously closed with hanging, mass murder and genital self-mutilation, it's quite a statement. Here he's assembled what must be his starriest cast to date. Kirsten Dunst and Antichrist's Charlotte Gainsbourg are ably supported by the likes of Kiefer Sutherland, Stelland and Alexander Skarsgård, Charlotte Rampling and John Hurt. The set-up is your bog-standard shlocky Deep Impact/Armageddon sci-fi - a newly-discovered planet is hurtling towards the Earth. Being a Von Trier film, the execution is of course anything but.

After a pre-credits sequence letting us know nice and early that there will be no last-minute heroics from Bruce Willis or Morgan Freeman, we get an emotional rollercoaster in two parts. The first focuses on the wedding of depressive Justine (Dunst) at her sister Claire's (Gainsbourg) country house. All around her people are coaxing, bribing, urging, pleading for her to just be happy. But she can't. Von Trier no doubt draws on his own struggles with the illness to give the viewer an exhausting window on depression. The second part flips the sisters' outlooks, as Melancholia (subtle-as-a-planetary collision, that name) edges ever closer.

It's visually stunning from beginning to end, with the opening and closing moments in particular being (quite literally) breathtaking. As a raw exploration of depression, the first part offers a sense of understanding that Jodie Foster's The Beaver apparently couldn't get near, while the audience is also helped along by flashes of wonderfully dry humour. In a much starker part two, Gainsbourg, Dunst, Sutherland and Von Trier combine so well that as the inevitable occurs, you feel - if not as blown away as they are - not all that far off.

> Lars Von Trier talks Hitler, porn and Melancholia
> Watch the Melancholia trailer video here
> Cannes 2011: Our top ten festival picks
> Cannes Film Festival complete coverage