Lars von Trier is a provocatuer film maker and you can see the roots of that persona in his first major film, Tlement of Crime. Once you accept the conceit that the entire film is happening in the protagonist's subconcious under hypnosis, it all makes a startling kind of brutal sense. This is not "sci-fi" or "futuristic". It is a straightforward story of Europe at the end of the 20th century seen through a nightmarish veil. It's brilliant. I wish I admired all of his work as much as I like this film.