Vinterberg is the vinegary Dane who, in films like Festen and The Hunt, captured the chill of life so acutely that it made your heart twinge – and the story of a headstrong young woman buffeted by three rival suitors in south-west Victorian England seemed like the kind of jape he and Lars von Trier, his some-time collaborator, might have cooked up during a casual morning stroll across a blasted heath.