The latest project to emerge from the Dogme 95 manifesto - the 'vow of chastity' co-signed by four Danish film-makers in an attempt to eliminate cinematic artifice - is the first to be filmed outside of Scandinavia and the first to be shot in English. Whether this will cut much ice with moviegoers is debatable, many of whom may have already tired of this experimental exercise in minimalism.

The first three features produced by the collective - Thomas Vinterburg's "Festen", Soren Kragh Jacobsen's "Mifune", and Lars Von Trier's "The Idiots" - employed the Dogme 'rules' (hand-held photography, natural light, location filming) to lend a gritty veracity to their often contentious narratives. But they seem ill-suited to "The King is Alive", in which 11 bus passengers stranded in the African desert pass the time by staging an amateur production of "King Lear".

Given the inherently naturalistic tone of the other Dogme films, director Kristian Levring asks us to accept some preposterous plot developments. Surely the driver would have made sure he had enough gas before embarking on such a trip? Would elderly Henry (David Bradley) really be able to write down the entire text of "Lear" from memory? And why would the passengers devote their energies to performing such an unsettling dramatic work?

Levring's intention is clearly to parallel the tragedy of Shakespeare's play with the emotional and sexual tensions it inspires among the disparate band of travellers. But that doesn't make this pretentious, overlong, and visually unappealing film any more worthy of your time.