Enter the second spring break

The most refreshing way - and my favorite - to see a film is with a blank mind. Imagine this: no posters, no trailers, no figurines at Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and Burger King. No interviews on Entertainment Tonight, no promotional featurette on Comedy Central. No critics' thumbs, no blurb in your local paper. Nothing, nada. Such is the treasured dangerous joy of film festivals.

For the uninformed and the uninitiated to foreign cinema, the program for the Minneapolis/St. Paul International Film Festival might read like a menu in French, interesting, even provocative titles but with no meaning to the viewer. With the show kicking off tomorrow and lasting for two full weeks in that city not so far from us, there's no better opportunity for film lovers to dive into the fray.

However, what is exciting to some is frightening to others. Face it, film goers are consumers and we want to know the product before we cough up the dough. No one wants that feeling of disappointment in the parking lot afterwards. It's in this spirit of guarded consumerism that I've prepared notes on four films, a miniscule sampling of the 130 that will screen within the next two weeks. It is my hope these will serve as an appetizer to a virtually limited buffet of local, national and international cinema. Remember: that disappointed feeling can come from Hollywood movies that we know practically everything about. Enjoy!

Decasia
Film is dead! declares Robert Rodriguez, on the special features of his digital western "Once Upon a Time in Mexico." He may be right, but as Bill Morrison's "Decasia: The State of Decay," illustrates, there can be life in death. A found-art collage of badly decayed celluloid set to an orchestral score, "Decasia" is a beautiful funeral march for the decade-old art.

The decomposing celluloid - blistered, bruised and warped - is a living character, shifting and pulsating, running the length of the frame like a stream of micro-organisms being sucked past a microscope. The subjects are dead, ghosts caught in shifting fields of light and contrast, waxing from silhouette to halo in seconds. The settings impermanent, fleeting, changing, sometimes indistinguishable. What has drawn into focus is the film itself.

The beauty of chemistry that we all take for granted converges with the process of deterioration and death for a moving collage. And it's sad too. In one scene, a procession of altar boys make their leaden march into a church, pallbearers of the age of cinema.

Slasher
Not be confused with "Thriller" the horror music video directed by John Landis ("Animal House," "An American Werewolf in London") "Slasher," the documentary of serial-huckster Michael Bennett is a real American horror story. The Slasher is a mercenary car sale promoter brought in by a struggling Memphis Toyota dealership to hold a three-day sale, a circus of sleaze with the sweaty, raspy, tuxedo-clad Bennett at the reigns.

But what happens when you try to sell 50 cars in three days in the bankruptcy capital of the country? The key to this caper, its prime bait "the $88 car," the Slasher's trick, a vehicle - pardon the pun - for the America myth of "Something for nothing."

"Because I'm a used car salesman, people assume that everything that comes out of my mouth is a lie," the slasher says opening the film. But believing whole hog, the white lies that get us in the door no matter how outrageous they are is the true tragedy of the film, illustrated best when a beaming young girl, seeing her prized $88 car as a miracle, watches it die in her driveway. She sits on the steps, watching it bleed antifreeze, discovery that she's paid $88 for nothing.

Dogville and The 5 Obstructions
The films of Lars Von Trier are equal-parts sadism and masochism. The artist binds himself with rules - most notably those detailed in the DOGME95 manifesto, an ultra-realism movement that has spawned over 50 films - binds the viewer with their own conscience. The two newest works of the Danish director appear at MSPIFF: the contemptuous "Dogville" and the therapeutic "The 5 Obstructions."

In the latter Von Trier conscripts one of his great influences, the Danish director Jorgen Leth to take part in a work that is equal parts mind-game and filmmaking. Von Trier forces Lith to make five remakes of his award winning 1967 film "The Perfect Human," in which a man and a woman stand in a bare, white room, dance, pose, think, dress and eat.

In the first variation, Von Trier decrees that no edit be longer than 12 frames and that it must be shot in Cuba. At first Lith takes the claims to be preposterous, that Von Trier is trying to ruin the film from the onset. However, he finds ways to circumvent Von Trier's edicts at every pass, turning the restrictions to his advantage.

If this method sounds like Von Trier's own work, it's no coincidence. The film convincingly expounds the virtue of self-imposed rules. In one key scene, Von Trier punishes Lith for disobeying him by forcing Lith to make the third variation with absolute freedom. Lith groans a truly heartfelt protest.

Some groans will indeed be heard from the seats during Von Trier's other, more widely-known feature at the festival.

"Dogville" thrusts a cruel blade into the heart of American intolerance and twists it for 171 minutes. As far as unpleasant must-sees go, I'd opt for "Dogville" over "The Passion of the Christ," due to the fact that I think it's a better way for Americans to see themselves crucified. It's certainly a more original one.

A beautiful stranger running from something (Nicole Kidman) arrives in the quaint American small town of Dogville. At first, the townies refuse to hide her, citing their own risk. Later they decide the only way she can prove herself to group is to work, but they're not hiring outsiders. Von Trier's obstacle in this film is a complete lack of sets or props. The entire film takes place in an enormous sound stage with the buildings, doors and even the town dog, drawn in in chalk. Von Trier uses this vacuum to accentuate this otherwise naked satire of America. A grueling journey, with an ending that's worth the wait.