The Idiots (1998)
1h 54m | PG-13
A mix of home-video and documentary styles about a group of young people who have decided to get to know their “inner-idiots” and thus not only facing and breaking their outer appearance but also their inner.
Director: Lars von Trier
Studio: Zentropa Entertainments
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Video: 720p
Cast
Bodil Jørgensen
as Karen
Jens Albinus
as Stoffer
Anne Louise Hassing
as Susanne
Troels Lyby
as Henrik
Nikolaj Lie Kaas
as Jeppe
Louise Mieritz
as Josephine
Reviews
I'm really not one for surreal cinema, so after the first ten minutes of this I was starting to dread it. Well, I didn't. It's really quite a fun observational drama that follows a disparate group of friends who live on the outskirts of Copenhagen in an house that their leader "Stoffer" (Jens Albinus) is supposed to be selling. They survive on a diet of eating, drinking, getting stoned and shagged but mostly by implementing scamming scenarios in which they all pretend - to varying degrees - to be, well, idiots! It proves quite a successful ploy for getting free meals, cash - they play well on the embarrassment their behaviour can be for the "ordinary" folk who really just want them to go away! These are partially cynical activities, but they also serve to illustrate just how mundane day-to-day life can be, and with the aid of their new member "Karen" (Bodil Jørgensen) - who does actually, we discover, have some rather more serious baggage - we embark on quite a funny two hours of slapstick-cum-darkly, sometimes debauched, humorous antics. Now, personally, I didn't much like the "Stoffer" character - he had a degree of megalomania about him, but the rest of this mixes the serious with the foolish, the characterful with the banal and raises a smile all quite engagingly - even if some of it can be borderline excruciating to watch!