Bruno: A New Ambassador For Austria?

Not since The Sound of Music has an Austrian-themed movie won so much media attention.

Bruno, about the madcap adventures of an unemployed Viennese fashionista, opened worldwide on July 10th (well not quite worldwide, as Ukraine's Minister of Culture saw fit to ban the film).

Is this the movie to put Vienna back on the fashion map? Well, we'll have to wait and see, and although hip young Viennese seem amused by the film, not everyone is delighted, not least Austria's incoming ambassador to Britain, Emil Brix, who denounced the movie as "completely improper and unsuitable."

Of course, given that even the film's keenest advocates concede that it is uproariously obscene, it was always going to be unlikely that Bruno would be everyone's cup of tea.

"I want to be the biggest Austrian superstar since Hitler" proclaims gay fashionista Bruno, whose escapades include an attempted seduction of an American presidential candidate, and the adoption a black "gayby" a la Madonna, in his bid to win media attention.

So far, Bruno has done pretty well at the Viennese box office, and critics have been reasonably upbeat. Will this make Bruno star guest at Vienna's glitzy Life Ball? Hope springs eternal...