We first meet Juliette in a provincial airport in France where we also meet her estranged sister (Elsa Zylberstein). From there we watch the family dance around the thing that no-one is allowed to mention, and over the course of the nicely-paced and compelling 115 minutes the secret and its ramifications are drawn out bit by bit.

At various points during the movie the music score seems to be on the verge of breaking into yet another incompetent, facile, bland, commercial cover version of Leonard Cohen's “Hallelujah”, but mercifully this is not the case; dear Leonard's art remains unsullied and the sensitivities of the paying public are spared.

Juliette is revealed as a woman of incredible compassion, courage and devotion, although first impressions are of a somewhat dowdy, uninteresting woman who has done nothing with her life. However she has been caught up in an impossible family situation which she must suffer alone, caught between a rock and a hard place. She cannot even reveal information she has that would gain her the sympathy of many. True friendship is beyond her grasp because it inevitably will lead to questions about her whereabouts for the previous 15 years and what she was up to. However there is some companionship to be had for Juliette in the person of her sister's father-in-law who, after suffering a debilitating stroke, is left without speech but with an active brain and the ability to hear. She can talk to him in monologue without running the risk of the questions that dialogue would permit.

Rebuilding her life 15 years after the event she can confide in no-one. Those who know the facts of her past are mistrustful, suspicious and hostile. Gradually, with the love of her sister and various others who don't know of her past, she arrives at a place where she begins to live again, but only just. The past will always be there, and the mitigating circumstances which gave rise to her dark secret are known only to the sister and to the movie-goers. It's frustrating not being able to jump into the set and explain the full story to the other characters. However this is cinema, not pantomime, and we can't shout out “he's behind you” when we see a villain creeping up behind the hero. A bit like life.

Philippe Claudel directs.

Dogville is a tiny town consisting of just seven households and 15 adults in total. Tom Edison (Paul Bettany) is the resident philosopher, who plans to write a book about morality but has not yet begun. He also serves as the town mayor, holding community meetings on moral rearmament in the local church. When a beautiful woman, Grace (Nicole Kidman), arrives in town claiming she is being chased by gangsters, Dogville welcomes her and agrees to grant her refuge but at a cost. Grace must prove herself to Dogville's residents, first through physical labor, then through friendship, then through utterly astonishing sacrifices that, in classic von Trier style, go way beyond anything viewers might imagine. It is a bizarre and disturbing film,

Grace is used by the townsfolk as servant then slave becoming more and more demanding of her and punishing her for running away by putting a iron dog collar round her neck and attaching a chain and fixing it to a heavy iron wheel. She can move round slowly from place to place dragging the wheel. All the while grace remains quiet placid and uncomplaining. She even submits to being used as the town prostitute by all the male residents. Eventually they want rid of her and call the gangsters. But the townsfolk do not know what they are doing - perhaps they think she is just some gangster's moll.

The gangsters return. The townsfolk hand her over and she is led to the biggest car and sits on the back seat with “the godfather”. Seated at the right hand of the father she talks to her daddy whom she had run away from (and you wonder was she a prodigal daughter fleeing his life of crime) They converse about revenge and taking up the power and the inheritance he offers her. An interesting almost philosophical discussion in which she eventually asks her father to give her the power now. He agrees. And she says memorably - “I want to use this power to make the world a better place. “

There is a pause and you think of mercy and all that Grace has suffered and then she says “The world will be a better place if Dogville ceases to exist - Shoot all the people here and then burn it down.”. She and her father sit in the limousine and watch as her orders are carried out.

This film deals with the religious ideas of forgiveness using the ironically named Grace. I think of this story with the bible tale of Joseph (he of the amazing Technicolor dreamcoat). In the middle of the story is this account of Joseph's forgiveness of his brothers following the death of their father Jacob. The heart of the passage Joseph says to his brothers: "Am I in the place of God?" In other words, is it I who should judge you? This rhetorical question clearly expects the answer, certainly not - God alone may judge. But more than a bare refraining from judgment, Joseph offers concrete forgiveness of his brothers, promising to provide for them and their dependants.

Sunday school musicals may have bred familiarity with Joseph's magnanimity, which causes us to miss its astonishing nature. Joseph was half-killed, then sold and written off for dead. His father was deceived into an appalling grief. Families today are often bitterly divided over far less than this dysfunctional group. But Joseph never took his chance to judge, preferring the good of many people than the fleeting pleasure of revenge. It is a good, if near impossible, example to follow.

Jesus repeatedly exhorts forgiveness. In the parable of the unforgiving servant the discrepancy between how the king's servant is treated by the king and how he treats another servant in turn is the main point. He is forgiven an unimaginably large sum. Yet he will not forgive a measly debt, infinitesimally smaller. The king, angrier at his servant's hard-heartedness than his original debt, revokes his earlier forgiveness.

The moral is clear. What we have to forgive is minute compared with what we need to be forgiven. Furthermore, in being forgiven so much by God, we have an example of mercy to follow. Without this example, our meanness might be understandable: with the example, it is inexcusable. Indeed, the parable clearly indicates that the unforgiving have no right to expect mercy.

Forgiveness or vengeance and wrath: Could people really worship a God who behaved like Grace in Dogville? This film certainly started me thinking.