Because of all this, the film has been accused of misogyny. But actually it is therapists who come out of it worst. The glib, distant approach of the man is no match for the turmoil that has been unleashed in the woman. To emphasise this, there are images throughout of the overpowering force of nature which surrounds them. The dark, wintry woods which encroach on the cabin are alive with fear and violence. The setting is like a satanic Genesis. As if to underline the point, the cabin is called "Eden". Crows menace, acorns fall ominously and a deer — its dead baby hanging from beneath its tail — stares passively on. And yes, a fox speaks the words "chaos reigns" — a very unnecessary pushing of the point, which, as at Cannes, provoked a round of laughter at my screening. It also demonstrated how thin is the cord from which most art-house films dangle. One false move — or should I say, one especially false move — and the whole artifice can fall apart. The audience's attention is recovered here simply by the fact that the really gruesome bits occur later.   

There's no question that Antichrist is stylistically very accomplished. It veers between exquisitely slick, black and white, pop video slow-motion and the quick, hand-held camera work which distinguished the dogme film-making movement of which von Trier is the best-known proponent. But in the end, what is the effect? 

Apparently von Trier wrote the script after a particularly bad bout of depression. He intends the film to offer us "a glimpse into the dark world of my imagination". Dark it certainly is. Those seeking to discern the director's worldview might even conclude that in its nastiness and brutishness, its sense of an ultimately uncontrollable natural world that cannot be rationalised away, it is quite a conservative film. There appears to be no light at the end of the tunnel. It is, as they say in Hollywood, a major downer. 

Of course, even downers can make you feel oddly alive. But not this; we spend an intense 100 minutes with von Trier's couple, and by the end of it we still care little about their fate and the events which have brought them to such self-destruction. If it disturbs you, then it will disturb you in the way that witnessing a car crash can do so. As I left the cinema, and emerged into what was a stunning summer evening, I felt rather like I did when I once chanced upon the aftermath of a suicide from a tall building in the King's Road in London. It was jolting and saddening. But it was not illuminating. It was not art.