Il grande capo

Lars von Trier's Danish-language comedy. It never interested me much, though I used to love von Trier (despite always acknowledging his numerous flaws). And it is definitely one of his least good films. If we ever find ourselves looking back at his career in the distant future, this one will not be mentioned much. It's about an out-of-work actor (Jens Albinus) who is hired by a company's CEO who is pretending only to be that company's lead lawyer (Peter Gantzler) to impersonate the mythical, unseen "boss of it all". Gantzler plans to sell off the company, as well as his employee's patents, to an Icelander (played by Children of Nature's director, Friðrik Þór Friðriksson), but he doesn't want to be identified as the guilty party, instead setting up this patsy to take the blame from his crazy co-workers (among whom is Iben Hjejle, whom you may remember from Stephen Frear's High Fidelity). The film is moderately amusing. Though many people seem to think von Trier's oeuvre consists mostly of tragedies, his work is more often darkly comic. The Boss of It All isn't nearly his funniest work. The Kingdom and The Idiots are both funnier, as is arguably Europa. Friðrik Þór Friðriksson actually provides most of the film's laughs as the thunderous, Dane-hating Icelander, recalling Ernst-Hugo Järegård's Dane-hating Swede from The Kingdom. But still, The Boss of It All is good, even if it will eventually just be a footnote.