The Idiots

The Idiots

28/4/1998 1h 54m 6.5/10

Overview

A group of people gather at a Copenhagen suburban home to break all the limitations and to bring out the 'inner idiot' in themselves.

Director

Lars von Trier

Top Billed Cast

Nikolaj Lie Kaas

Nikolaj Lie Kaas

Jeppe

Bodil Jørgensen

Bodil Jørgensen

Karen

Jens Albinus

Jens Albinus

Stoffer

Anne Louise Hassing

Anne Louise Hassing

Susanne

Troels Lyby

Troels Lyby

Henrik

Louise Mieritz

Louise Mieritz

Josephine

Reviews

CinemaSerf

CinemaSerf

8/25/2023

7/10

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!

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