Lars von Trier’s latest film rightly resists the idea that art must be morally correct and inoffensive

Danish director Lars von Trier is back at Cannes Film Festival, proclaiming that ‘it’s all good – we had a little misunderstanding for seven years’ and worrying that his new serial killer movie, The House that Jack Built, isn’t divisive enough.

In fact, the reception of the film has indeed revealed an divide in the mentality of contemporary culture. More than a hundred members of the audience walked out in protest at the film’s première and a similar number did the same from the press screening this week. Nonetheless, Von Trier received a lengthy standing ovation on his arrival to the première, and those who stayed till the end acknowledged the film with demonstratively insistent applause.

A strong tension between two approaches to art and culture has come to light in Cannes this year, as the festival explicitly declared its dedication