The new film “The Boss of It All” may be a departure from the recent work of Lars von Trier, but it’s also a homecoming of sorts. Simultaneously mocking his own work and proving his aptitude with lighthearted fare, Mr. von Trier has created a dark Danish satire, introducing a Brechtian flavor to the BBC show — and now NBC’s version of — “The Office.”

The film follows the travails of the amiable Ravn (played like an intellectual teddy bear by Peter Gantzler), who has gone to great lengths to assuage his fear of confrontation. The owner of a successful IT company, Ravn invented a fictional boss at the onset to take the blame for all the difficult decisions he wasn’t prepared to make. This conceit allowed him to play the good guy through 10 years of building his company, but now it inhibits him from reaping the rewards. On the cusp of the biggest deal of his life, Ravn’s potential buyer refuses to do business with anyone other than the purported “boss of it all.”

So Ravn has found an actor (Jens Albinus) to play the role of the boss to seal the deal and make him a rich man. The man he has chosen, Kristoffer, takes to the role voraciously. Out of work and a bit of a hack, Kristoffer is a devotee of the fictional melodramatic playwright Gambini — “the first to see through Ibsen” — who Ravn dismissively writes off as a moron.

But Kristoffer’s enthusiasm for the role fumbles the deal. The buyer reschedules the contract signing, and Kristoffer mistakenly meets Ravn’s employees, who are eager to interact with the man responsible for all of the unpopular company decisions over the past decade.

As Kristoffer stumbles through his role, and the employees try to make sense of the enigma who has been pulling the strings on their careers, there is ample room for comedy. Mr. von Trier has an adept hand with observational humor and heavily plumbs the space between perception and reality here.

Largely unprepared for his role, Kristoffer (also known as Svend by his new employees) is forced to bluff and feel his way through the details of his character. Like any director, Ravn has left blanks for his actor to figure out, but rather than bouncing his character off of other actors, Kristoffer’s actions are met by very real responses. He is subjected to unexpected elements, including marriage proposals, photocopierinduced shrieks, and violence brought on by rural depression.

The results are often very riotous, as when Kristoffer/Svend defends himself by saying, “I’ve been a cornholer since birth,” or tells Ravn authoritatively, “my character doesn’t like when they cry or shout or hit.”

Mr. von Trier, of course, is not interested in creating a Danish version of “The Office” (and insists he hadn’t seen the show when he made the film), and has more theatrical tasks in mind. The director opens “The Boss of It All” with a reflection of his own image gliding up the side of a glass office building on a camera lift. He apologizes for his presence, but announces, “This film won’t be worth a moment’s reflection. It’s a comedy and harmless as such. So why not poke fun at artsy-fartsy culture?”

In fact, the film satirizes Mr. von Trier as much as it takes on the strange habits of the Danes. At one point, a character explains, “Life is like a Dogme movie — it can be hard to hear what’s being said.”

Set in Denmark and spoken in Danish, “The Boss of It All” also returns to some of Mr. von Trier’s more youthful principles. The 51-year-old director was one of a handful of Danish filmmakers who created the Dogme95 movement as a response to what they saw as the excesses of stylized Hollywood cinema. Dogme films looked to simplify and reclaim film from the decadence of mainstream movies. Denouncing excessive props and unnatural settings, they wanted to do away with manipulation of images, make-up, lighting, and sound effects.

Mr. von Trier referred to the Dogme guidelines as his “vow of chastity,” and though many of his films — including recent stylized political tales such as “Manderlay” “Dogville,” and “Dancer in the Dark”— engage in more than a few cinematic sins, “The Boss of It All” focuses on the basics.

The film does not fit all of the Dogme regulations, but there is no soundtrack, little make-up, and most of the film has been shot in an actual office with what looks to be natural lighting. To this, Mr. von Trier has added the Autovision camera, an automatic, randomized camera that chose every shot in the film.

The random movements of the camera are well suited to the arbitrary world Mr. von Trier has created. In much the same way that the invisible hand of the boss fiddles with these people’s lives, the arbitrary shifts of the Autovision camera displays an impersonality and randomness.

It also brings another meta element to the film, one that allows Mr. von Trier to shirk his responsibilities as director in the way that Ravn and, eventually, Kristoffer/ Svend have become so adept. As the two try to complete their hoax and the employees try to make sense of the realized figment placed before them, the director of the film stands just outside the window, toying with them and documenting it all.

The result is often self-conscious and cold, but also frequently endearing. Some of the subtle cultural jibes may be lost in the translation of the Danish, but Mr. von Trier proves his reach and his agility with controlled narrative. His austere cinematic intentions here often leave things with a rudimentary aesthetic, but he is very much at home with the details of his native Denmark, and for those have tired of his merciless critique of American life, it will be a welcome switch.

mkeane@nysun.com