`Dancer' came to Washington without its director

Lars von Trier, the 44-year-old Danish director, has never been to the United States. But that didn't stop him from setting "Dancer in the Dark" in Washington state, or even filming some footage here last year.

"It's actually an American tradition," he said by phone from Copenhagen. "You make films that take place all over the world, like `Casablanca,' yet you never leave the studio."

Von Trier did send his leading actresses, Bjork and Catherine Deneuve, to shoot scenes at Walla Walla state prison, Sedro-Wooley and Arlington last year. He didn't accompany them because he won't fly. He said he has "a good man" who can be trusted to shoot scenes like this and imitate Von Trier's style.

"It has to take place somewhere," he said. "It's a filmic place in the world, even if it had to look a little like Nordic countries."

It also had to take place in a location where the death penalty is government policy, and that rules out Scandinavia. Bjork plays a woman who is sentenced to hang in early-1960s Washington; Deneuve is her loyal friend.

"It was part of the story from the start, so I had to put it in a country that has the death penalty," said Von Trier. "I'm against the death penalty, but the film is not about that. I don't see it as a political film, or a film about America.

"I'm sorry that people feel I'm criticizing America. There were some American journalists at Cannes who were angry because I had not been to America."

About five minutes of the real Northwest is included in the movie, which may be the first top prize winner at the Cannes Film Festival to be set in Washington. All the other exteriors were shot in Sweden; some interiors were done in Denmark.

Von Trier's script was inspired partly by "In Cold Blood," the 1967 film of Truman Capote's grim nonfiction book about two men who were executed by the state, and a Danish fairy tale, "Golden Heart," that also inspired Von Trier's previous Cannes winner, "Breaking the Waves."

"It's a story about a little girl who was so poor, but who gave away everything she had," he said. "It was so melodramatic, my father just wanted to puke when he heard it. He hated it so much, he thought it was so terrible - opium of the people and a lie. He was so angry it made me very curious."

His parents' dislike of musicals also made him want to make one. "Dancer in the Dark" includes choreographed musical numbers, songs by Bjork and several numbers from "The Sound of Music."

"They were very anti-American," he said. "It was bad enough for them that musicals were American."

He picked "The Sound of Music" because "it's a musical that deals with musicals. The songs and lyrics are very beautiful and they have to do with singing and the reason why you're singing."

He also credits Deneuve's French 1960s musicals, "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg" and "The Young Girls of Rochefort," as inspirations.

"For me, they were very European, very clean in style," he said.

He picked Bjork because he'd spotted her in Spike Jonze's music video, "It's Oh So Quiet." Had he seen her in her 1987 movie debut, "The Juniper Tree"?

"No, thank God," he said. "I saw a little of it later, and I think she's very good. But the movie . . . no."

His relationship with the Icelandic singer was quite stormy; they disagreed about a number of musical moments. When asked about the scene in which she sings "My Favorite Things" as a prison lament, he said he doesn't take responsibility for it.

"It turned out that way because when you're using an actor or a person like Bjork, you have to go with her rather than against her. I would have liked a happier version."

"Dancer in the Dark" revolves around the sacrifices that Bjork's character makes for her son, Jean, yet there are few scenes between them.

"There was a longer version but not much more time with him," he said. "It was a little cheap to do something obvious with this mother-and-son relationship. I tried not to make it obvious; I even made him a little unbearable. I'm not Douglas Sirk, you know."

Von Trier believes that perhaps only Sirk, the master of 1950s soap-opera kitsch ("Imitation of Life," "All That Heaven Allows"), could have pulled off more mother-son scenes.

"Have you seen (Sirk's) `Magnificent Obsession'?" Von Trier asked. "I tell you, that's a man who always goes all the way. Maybe his secret was he had a Danish mother. So did I."

For his last couple of pictures, "The Idiots" and "Dancer in the Dark," Von Trier has acted as his own camera operator.

"I was the idiot behind the camera on `The Idiots,' " he said. "My idea is that it gives some sense of real life to it." It also suggests his stripped-down Dogma 95 approach, which started among his circle of Scandivian director friends and has now branched out into movies from other countries.

"There are about 20 registered Dogma films now," he said. Dogma 95's 10-point "vow of chastity" calls for directors to make use of handheld cameras, shoot their films on location, use sound recorded at the same time as the images, avoid props and special lighting effects and post-production dubbing.

Von Trier's current project is the third part of his miniseries, "The Kingdom." Parts One and Two (filmed in 1994-97) are playing this weekend at the Seattle Art Museum.

"Four of the actors have died," he said. "It deserves to have some kind of end to it. It's not like `Twin Peaks.' I'm very fond of that show, but they looked like they didn't know where they were going.

"That was set in the Northwest too, wasn't it? Someday I'd like to come there and go fishing."