Sex and death. Guilt and psychosis. Witchcraft and mutilation. Beauty and obscenity. Lars von Trier's "Antichrist" exists in an orbit all its own, where conventional judgments don't apply. It is a challenge, not an entertainment. To watch the Danish provocateur's new film is to experience unrelenting pain, shading into revulsion, while being inspired by his virtuoso command of the medium and sharp intelligence.

"Antichrist" is sexually transgressive from its first moments, and fiercely gorgeous. A married couple -- we know them only as He and She -- make love beneath a flowing shower. A stately Handel aria provides an aura of sanctity and calm, and their lovemaking is shot in handsome, explicit detail. But there is a foreboding undertone as well. While they are lost in passion, a tragedy occurs that leaves them devastated. Von Trier begins by placing their nakedness on public view. By the time the film ends, he will have flayed them emotionally until their very souls are exposed.

Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg play the privileged, doomed couple in fearless, fiercely committed performances. In an early episode, She recovers from the trauma of the opening scene in a hospital bed. She has been medicated for a month. She accuses him of indifference to her pain. Insisting that he knows best, He, a psychiatrist, discards her pills and prescribes a trip to their isolated cabin, a place they call Eden. The trip is sure to trigger strong memories for her. Confronting her fears, He complacently insists, will banish them.

We know this will backfire. If movies have taught us anything, it is that middle-class couples escaping to a rural location will be dragged to hell.

The film operates on the level of a fable, and viewers unwilling to accept those terms will find it absurd and offensive. The story's take-it-or-leave-it moment arrives when a talking fox warns Dafoe's character, "Chaos reigns." At this point, you either throw up your hands or give in. Dafoe reacts with the solemn awe of a man encountering a voice in a burning bush, and I was right there with him.

The movie grows more surreal and unhinged as it goes. Is She a tortured prophet or a lunatic? Is He genuinely trying to cure her grief or psychologically manipulating her to reassert his authority in the relationship? Are they characters or representatives of two ways of thinking, arrogant rationalism battling frenzied emotion?

Von Trier might have answers, but he doesn't let on about them. "Antichrist" is not a film to be enjoyed, but it compels our attention and respect.

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