When Lars von Trier claimed to be suffering from depression two years ago, I assumed the illness was caused by his (then) most recent film, The Boss of it All. Not only did the office comedy fail to make as much noise as his prior features, but it actually earned a lot of favorable reviews. Some even called it (gasp!) enjoyable. For a guy used to polarizing critics with his often controversial and groundbreaking movies, that reception had to be tremendously dissatisfying.

But the filmmaker is back at Cannes this year, and I mean back. His latest movie, Antichrist, is apparently as audacious, shocking and misogynistic as everyone expects von Trier’s work to be. And even though it’s getting a lot of negative reviews, it’s still the talk of the festival this year. No wonder the filmmaker is looking so jolly in photos from Cannes; the attention, both good and bad, must be doing wonders for his mental health.

Nobody from Spout has seen Antichrist yet, unfortunately, but don’t doubt we’re trying. Desperately. And we know you’re looking forward to Karina’s take as much as The Brothers Bloom director Rian Johnson is. Today he Tweeted: “Waiting for @KarinaLongworth to see & review Antichrist the way a drunk man waits for a hint of blessed equilibrium.” She responded that she hopes to prove male reporters wrong in their belief that no woman will like it.

While we wait for her anticipated response, we’ll just have to settle on reading other reviews from around the blogosphere. I’ve highlighted some of my favorites, both positive and negative after the jump:

First, Those Who Hated It (I Think):

• Mike D’Angelo at A.V. Club addresses von Trier in a letter-form review:
  

  If our paths cross over the next couple of days while you’re in town, don’t be surprised if I walk up unannounced and give you a giant bear hug. I’m pretty sure I kind of despised your new movie, Antichrist, but that doesn’t remotely matter. Thank you. Thank you for having the guts to make something as insane and offensive and wholly uncompromising as this.

• Jeffrey Wells at Hollywood Elsewhere, in a post titled “Antichrist=Fartbomb,” gives the disappointed von Trier-fan perspective:
  

  A man whom I’ve admired and respected for many years has lost his mind for the time being, or at last lost it while he was writing and shooting the film. I just can’t fathom how the director of Breaking The Waves and Dancer in the Dark and Dogville could have made something so amateurishly awful.

• Todd McCarthy at Variety also notes the film’s flatulent quality:
  

  Lars von Trier cuts a big fat art-film fart with “Antichrist”…most of the director’s usual fans will find this outing risible, off-putting or both — derisive hoots were much in evidence during and after the Cannes press screening — while the artiness quotient is far too high for mainstream-gore groupies.

• Roger Ebert at the Chicago Sun-Times, who writes that this is the “most despairing film I’ve ever seen,” references von Trier’s past work for different effect than Wells does:
  

  What can be said is that von Trier, after what many found the agonizing boredom of his previous Cannes films “Dogville” and “Manderlay,” has made a film that is not boring. Unendurable, perhaps, but not boring.

• Lisa Schwarzbaum at Entertainment Weekly is a female critic who apparently disliked the film, though she does have some compliments to share:
  

  The movie looks almost tauntingly great, of course, with von Trier’s longtime collaborator (and Slumdog Millionaire Oscar winner) Anthony Dod Mantle as cinematographer. So it’s one good-looking, publicity-grabbing provocation, with an overlay of pseudo-Christian allegory thrown in to deflect a reasonable person’s accusations of misogyny.

• Dave Calhoun at Time Out London actually found it boring at parts:
  

  …as a horror film, none of this is as creepy or terrifying as it should be: some bits really drag…It’s all at once barmy and boring and laughable and a little bit disturbing – mostly because you wonder where the hell Von Trier gets all this from.

• Wendy Ide at The Times also found parts of the film to be “turgidly dull,” but she’s curious about the next step for the von Trier shock factory:
  

  It’s difficult to imagine where von Trier will go next in his career. A graphic onscreen clitorectomy is a tough act to follow. And I can’t imagine that actresses will be queuing up to work with him after this.

Now, Those Who Loved It (I Think):

• Manohla Dargis at The New York Times is female, and she apparently liked it — or at least was fascinated by its nonsense:
  

  By the time the animatronic fox warns the understandably baffled looking Mr. Dafoe that “chaos reigns” it’s clear we’re not in Kansas anymore or even a serious movie. Chaos reigns if not narrative sense, but I would be lying if I didn’t admit that this impossible movie kept me hooked from start to finish.

• Anne Thompson at Thompson on Hollywood is also a female critic who also gives von Trier props:
  

  …he’s got filmmaking chops. He knows how to manipulate an audience. I was enthralled at the start of the film, an extraordinary slow-motion sequence. And the movie does hang together. He knows where he’s going. It’s just that much like Ken Russell in The Devils, Trier’s taking you to horrifying, hallucinatory places where anything can happen. (Hieronymous Bosch comes to mind.) And where most people don’t want to go.

• Peter Brunette at The Hollywood Reporter admits the film falls apart as a work of storytelling, but he offers good reason to check it out:
  

  The film works much better on a purely visual level, if only viewers were able to forget that these are real people being represented in these voluptuous images, abetted by an often superb sound design. From the opening titles, abstract expressionism reigns powerfully and conveys a great deal of intense, if finally unspecifiable, meaning.

• Charles Ealy at the Austin Movie Blog recognizes that, good or bad, this is an important film:
  

  It’s not often that you leave a movie and feel like you’ve just experience a moment in cinematic history…Cinematic precedents exist, of course, but the explicitness of these scenes take “Antichrist” way beyond what’s come before. Luis Bunuel’s “Chien Andalou” looks tame in comparison. And one scene evokes memories of Ingmar Bergman’s “Cries and Whispers,” although much more graphic.

• Xan Brooks at The Guardian teeters a bit before siding with favor:
  

  I stumble out in a daze, momentarily unsure whether I loved it or loathed it. Abruptly I realise that I love it. Von Trier has slapped Cannes with an astonishing, extraordinary picture – shocking and comical; a funhouse of terrors (of primal nature, of female sexuality) that rattles the bones and fizzes the blood…Pound for pound, this is surely the strongest film of the competition so far.

• Alex Billington at First Showing was also unsure at first, but ultimately he excitedly sides on the positive in response to this, his first experience with von Trier:
  

  I think I enjoyed it. See that’s the problem - Antichrist is fucked up. In a good way? Or in a bad way? Even I don’t know the answer to that question…but I can tell you it’s one hell of an exhilarating experience watching this. My gut feeling coming out of it is that I actually liked it, screwed up or not.

• David Bourgeois at Movieline is happy to have the old von Trier back, rating the film a 9 out of 10…for now, anyway:
  

  It would appear his bout of depression has awoken the filmmaker we grew to love (and hate) in the 1990s: Antichrist is the most original and thought-provoking work von Trier has done since Breaking the Waves. That said, I might entirely change my mind tomorrow — yet another reason why this film is remarkable.