This is a lethargic, pretty and empty study in ways of living and dying from Lars von Trier, in which the Dane borrows some of the trappings of the sci-fi genre to follow his peculiar nose for human behaviour. It’s a calmer work than his last, Antichrist, but it impresses only on a technical level, rather than on an intellectual or emotional one.

For all the time we spend with two sisters, Justine (Dunst) and Claire (Gainsbourg) – whose reactions to the world’s end define the film’s two chapters – it feels like von Trier is in it just for a few images set to music from Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde. The best of Melancholia would make a great photography exhibition. The rest is best forgotten.