Container review

Container is about fame, existential angst and sex changes. Or it could be about vomit, world starvation and Paris Hilton. Or Chernobyl, foetuses and the Spice Girls. Or... well, you get the idea. Lukas Moodysson’s sometimes dazzling, always rambling follow-up to A Hole In My Heart is his most avant-garde effort yet, a schizophrenic, borderline boring headfuck that howls against life’s emptiness. More autistic than artistic, Container has no story, no characters and no sound except actress Jena Malone’s stream-of-consciousness. The visuals are equally baffling: a black-and-white collage of non-events featuring a fat man in a blond wig (Peter Lorentzon), who likes licking mirrors, and a woman (Mariha Åberg) who occasionally wears thigh-high boots. Difficult to sit through, it’s also hard to forget. “I don’t want to be in this movie,” whispers Malone’s little-girl-lost voiceover. Many people will sympathise.