Werner Herzog Almost Saves `Julien Donkey-Boy'

Movie review XX "julien donkey-boy," with Ewen Bremner, Chloe Sevigny, Werner Herzog, Evan Neumann, Joyce Korine. Directed and written by Harmony Korine. 94 minutes. Varsity. "R" - Restricted because of language, some sexuality and disturbing images.

Chloe Sevigny, so splendid as Brandon Teena's girlfriend, Lana, in "Boys Don't Cry" (also opening today), is used as window dressing in this typically indulgent film from Harmony Korine, who wrote the overrated "Kids" and directed the unwatchable "Gummo."

She's been cast as Pearl, the pregnant, ice-skating sister of the title character (played by "Trainspotting's" Ewen Bremner), a schizophrenic who works at a school for the blind. They share a mostly unhappy New Jersey home with an athletic brother, Chris (Evan Neumann), a grandmother (Joyce Korine) and a verbally abusive father (Werner Herzog).

"julien donkey-boy" is actually much easier to take than "Gummo," thanks primarily to Herzog, the German filmmaker ("Aguirre," "Fitzcarraldo") who does the most persuasive acting here. Whenever the movie threatens to get permanently sidetracked with adoring tracking shots of Sevigny or labored demonstrations of Korine's filmmaking integrity, Herzog is there to drag it back to Earth.

Endlessly berating his offspring ("Be a man," "A winner doesn't shiver," "I don't want a coward in the family"), Dad is so addicted to humiliation he's ridiculous. When he launches into a description of Clint Eastwood's "Dirty Harry" movies, especially the first one, he does so with a religious fervor that becomes monumentally absurd. He also listens to music while wearing a gas mask and he's hooked on cough syrup. After a few appearances, you can't wait for him to show up again.

The rest of the movie is smothered by Korine's attempts to adhere to the rules of "Dogma 95," the Danish filmmaking manifesto created by Lars Von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg to justify such nutty experiments as Von Trier's "The Idiots." Created as a response to "decadence" and "bourgeois romanticism" in modern films, "Dogma 95" requires filmmakers to use real locations and hand-held cameras and avoid post-dubbing, conventional scoring and special effects.

The result, in this case, is a movie that's so in love with its own grainy imagery that it can't be bothered to provide coherent characters or a story. Julien is supposedly based on Korine's schizophrenic uncle, but the character is barely defined, and Bremner is left with nothing to play.

This is officially the first American "Dogma 95" film, blessed by Vinterberg and Von Trier, and photographed by Anthony Dod Mantle, who shot Vinterberg's "The Celebration." For all its ambitions, "julien donkey-boy" is not much more than a collection of isolated bright spots.