Mads Brügger

n the absurdist comedy Red Chapel, Mads Brügger conned his way into North Korea. Now he raises the stakes in this satirical romp through an Africa where everything can be bought and sold, a continent that remains a pillager’s heaven. Flying into the “lawless” Central African Republic—which he calls the “appendix” to the Congo’s heart of darkness—Brügger passes himself off as a Liberian diplomat. He then proceeds to mix business and statesmanship in bewildering ways. In 97 show more hysterically, harrowingly amoral minutes, Brügger buddies up to sketchy conspirators, assisted by a local fixer and a European secretary. While more typical documentary investigations of corruption prove to be earnest at best, Brügger’s razor-sharp wit slices a new, blackly comic path through the little-understood underworld of international affairs. “As they say in diplomacy,” Brügger remarks, “if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu.” (PS) show less

By turns discomfiting and devilishly absurdist, The Red Chapel quite appropriately comes from Lars von Trier's production company, Zentropa. Mads Brügger has made a complex film about totalitarianism, role-playing, manipulation and how postmodern irony doesn't play so well in North Korea. Brügger believes that comedy can be the soft spot of a dictatorship and conceives a performance by two Korean-Danish comedians to expose the regime's absurdity. It doesn't go according to plan as their show more assigned theatrical director redirects their performance, spastic Jacob has a breakdown, and they get swept up in a vast, anti-American march where they are televised. Jacob's unsettled feelings are the film's emotional core while Brügger's von-Trier-ish presence, in dark glasses and sometimes Mao-esque jackets, shows a director bent on manipulating Jacob more than the North Koreans.

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