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" &amp;quot;No more happy endings,&amp;quot; director Lars Von Trier cheekily promised in the run up to Melancholia. Given that the ex-Dogme 95 man&amp;#039;s films have previously closed with hanging, mass murder and genital self-mutilation, it&amp;#039;s quite a statement. Here he&amp;#039;s assembled what must be his starriest cast to date. Kirsten Dunst and Antichrist&amp;#039;s Charlotte Gainsbourg are ably supported by the likes of Kiefer Sutherland, Stelland and Alexander Skarsg\u00E5rd, Charlotte Rampling and John Hurt. The set-up is your bog-standard shlocky Deep Impact/Armageddon sci-fi - a newly-discovered planet is hurtling towards the Earth. Being a Von Trier film, the execution is of course anything but. After a pre-credits sequence letting us know nice and early that there will be no last-minute heroics from Bruce Willis or Morgan Freeman, we get an emotional rollercoaster in two parts. The first focuses on the wedding of depressive Justine (Dunst) at her sister Claire&amp;#039;s (Gainsbourg) country house. All around her people are coaxing, bribing, urging, pleading for her to just be happy. But she can&amp;#039;t. Von Trier no doubt draws on his own struggles with the illness to give the viewer an exhausting window on depression. The second part flips the sisters&amp;#039; outlooks, as Melancholia (subtle-as-a-planetary collision, that name) edges ever closer. It&amp;#039;s visually stunning from beginning to end, with the opening and closing moments in particular being (quite literally) breathtaking. As a raw exploration of depression, the first part offers a sense of understanding that Jodie Foster&amp;#039;s The Beaver apparently couldn&amp;#039;t get near, while the audience is also helped along by flashes of wonderfully dry humour. In a much starker part two, Gainsbourg, Dunst, Sutherland and Von Trier combine so well that as the inevitable occurs, you feel - if not as blown away as they are - not all that far off. &amp;amp;gt; Lars Von Trier talks Hitler, porn and Melancholia&amp;amp;gt; Watch the Melancholia trailer video here&amp;amp;gt; Cannes 2011: Our top ten festival picks&amp;amp;gt; Cannes Film Festival complete coverage "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/movies/cannes-film-festival/review/a319553/melancholia-cannes-2011/>