I saw a film the other night. It was about a Eastern European journalist attempting to assimilate into the alien cultural landscape of the United States, a touching, pathos-laden piece with hints of Werner Herzog’s Stroszek. Oh OK, it was the new Borat film (goodbye, underground credentials) but whatever because I actually laughed til I had a bit of a cry. It’s just this expression on this one guy’s face - he’s standing next to a naked Sasha Baron-Cohen in a crowded lift, with a look I can only describe as 100% disgruntlement. Beat that, cinema.

Anyway, essentially, the film rolls along on a contrived plotline (Baron Cohen plays a Kazak TV presenter who travels to America to learn some First World lessons to improve his miserable, exceptionally racist homeland) but it’s the real-life segments that make it - absurd violations of all decent and proper human behaviour that simultaneously make you cackle like a drain and slightly queasy with nerves that at any moment this whole thing could spill over into horrible violence. Borat falls over multiple times in an antiques shop, breaking rack after rack of expensive plates. Borat announces, over microphone, to a busy Deep South rodeo “We fully support your War Of Terror! May George Bush drink the blood of every man, woman and child in Iraq!” Borat hands an etiquette coach his own faeces, in a plastic bag. And so on.

The fascinating factor is the blurring of the line between script and reality - is the guy who reads Borat the telegram announcing the death of his wife in on the joke? (”High five!”) Does Pamela Anderson, who Borat - spoiler alert! - attemps to kidnap and make his wife, via a “marriage” sack over the head, know exactly what’s going on? I don’t know. Maybe it’s not important.