Europa

‘Europa’ is a hallucinatory Danish film set in postwar Germany. Jean-Marc Barr plays a young German who aspires for a job as a street conductor. But this is no mere ‘Joe Job’; Barr's adventures on the line are designed as a metaphor for the emergence of the "New Europe" following the war. Barbara Sukowa costars as the daughter of a railroad magnate - and possible Nazi sympathizer. Many of the special-effects sequences are computer enhanced, but even the ‘live’ scenes have an unsettling, surreal quality to them (colors changing abruptly, backgrounds shifting without warning, etc.) Obviously this film will leave some viewers dazed and confused, which may be why English-language prints of ‘Europa’ are narrated by Max Von Sydow, who doesn't always clear things up, but is soft-spoken enough to calm us down. (Hal Erickson)