Opening this week are not one but two films by foreigners seeking to explain America’s “culture of violence.” “A History of Violence” by David Cronenberg, a Canadian, is reviewed elsewhere in these pages and takes the view that acts of violence, irrespective of their context or justification, leave a permanent moral taint on those who commit them, though they are also a permanent temptation – both to the violent themselves and to those who are attracted to their power.

It is a serious, though I think mistaken, idea. Altogether more frivolous is “Dear Wendy,” by Thomas Vinterberg (director) and Lars von Trier (writer), who are Danes. Their idea is that guns themselves have an erotic charge that draws us to them and makes us, willynilly, commit violent acts.

Although this seems to me to be self-evident nonsense, up until the film’s violent climax – when the filmmakers’ guiding principle becomes obvious – we can enjoy it for virtues that have nothing to do with its doubtful social psychology. Though an almost indescribably silly movie, it is also rather fun.

Partly this is owing to the strong performance of the young British actor, Jamie Bell (“Billy Elliot”) in the central role. He plays Dick Dandelion, the son of a coal miner in the rundown Electric Park section of the coal-mining town of Estherslope. Meant to be generic America, this town is so strange that it is impossible for any American to take it seriously.

Mr. von Trier, who wrote the script, has famously never been to America – which hasn’t prevented him in such earlier films as “Dancer in the Dark” and “Dogville” from savagely criticizing our country – and Mr. Vinterberg’s transatlantic visits have been few and brief. Their film was made in Denmark and Germany, but it looks as if it were set on one of the remoter moons of Saturn.

Dick’s mother is gone, and he is estranged from his father. His only friend is the black housekeeper, Clarabelle (Novella Nelson), who one day urges him to go to a birthday party for her grandson, Sebastian (Danso Gordon). As a present, Dick buys Sebastian what he takes to be a toy gun. But he finds it difficult to square the gift with his “pacifist” conscience. Unable to take the gun back, he drops it in a box.

Years later, as he is cleaning out the house after his father dies, Dick finds the gun and shows it to Stevie (Mark Webber), a fellow employee at the supermarket where he works stocking shelves.

Stevie turns out to be immensely knowledgeable about firearms. He tells Dick that the gun is not a toy but a 6.6-mm double action revolver. He also shows him his own weapon, an Italian made 7.63-mm pistol brought home as a souvenir from the battle of El Alamein by an uncle.

Stevie calls his gun “Bad Steel” and suggests to Dick that he should name his, too. Because it is considered to be a woman’s gun on account of its smallness, Dick names it Wendy. Most of the film consists of Dick’s letters, given in voice-over, to Wendy, whom he treats as a lover.

He and Stevie both consider themselves pacifists, but both like the feeling of power and confidence that comes from carrying concealed weapons. They begin to practice shooting in an abandoned mineshaft.

Soon they invite other kids from the town who are considered misfits and outsiders to join them, and to bring their own guns.

They call themselves “the Dandies,” electing Dick to be their leader, and adopt a whole set of rituals about their guns, which they all name, as well as a private vocabulary and a set of fantastical costumes. These are meant to be reminiscent of the dandies of Regency England – though there are also elements of Oscar Wilde and Evelyn Waugh in the mix.

The one thing they all agree on is that their guns are never to be used outside “the Temple,” the club’s meeting place in the mineshaft. “The most important thing for a Dandy is never to show off his partner for any reason … It may be carried but not brandished.”

“Knowing about it but not doing it makes you stronger and better,” Dick theorizes.

The attempts of this bunch of moony, excluded youths to invent their own social context hold our interest because we are forced to inhabit their world ourselves. Almost the only representatives of the world apart from the Dandies are Clarabelle and the dubiously human Sheriff Krugsby (Bill Pullman).

But this also means that, because we never see what they are misfitting with, it’s hard to keep them in focus as misfits – or anything other than Dandies. As a result, the film’s claims to social significance are vitiated. Mr. Vinterberg has tried to tie the film in with the Columbine school shootings, but its remoteness from reality, which is what makes it enjoyable, is also what makes it worthless as social commentary. Whatever else may be said about Columbine, it didn’t happen in the world inhabited by this movie.

The climactic shootout-ballet between the Dandies and an army of police led by Sheriff Krugsby has its funny moments, as surrealism generally does, but its allusions to the spaghetti Westerns of Sergio Leone or “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” are a kind of filmmaker’s shorthand for what has long since become the hackneyed view that it is American culture that produces the violent ending. I can’t see anyone being persuaded of this who doesn’t already believe it.

jbowman@nysun.com