Baron Cohen’s satire at new level with Bruno

Sacha Baron Cohen will be back on the big screen in the summer – this time in the guise of the flamboyantly homosexual Austrian fashion reporter Bruno who, like his preposterous Kazakh journalist Borat, began life on television's Da Ali G Show.

And the audience at a special 22-minute preview at the South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin, Texas - otherwise known as SXSW - reports that he's taken his cringe-inducing satire even further than he did with the 2006 film, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.

The new movie - which film guide compilers will be delighted to hear is simply entitled Bruno - is scheduled for release in July. It opens with Bruno being fired by his TV channel after causing a rumpus while reporting on a Milan fashion show. So he heads for Hollywood in a bid to become the "most famous Austrian star since Adolf Hitler".

He arrives with his boyfriend, David, and what he thinks is this season's must-have Tinseltown accessory – an adopted African baby. The preview audience was then shown Bruno questioning Los Angeles mothers getting their children to audition for a ludicrous photo shoot with the adopted baby, and discovering that they'll do just about anything to further their kids' careers.

In one interview, he takes issue with a baby who weighs 30 pounds.
Bruno: "I'm not looking for the Scarlett Johansson type, I'm looking for the Nicole Ritchie type... can your daughter lose 10 pounds in 7 days?"
Mother: "We can try. I think she can do it."
Bruno: "Would you consider liposuction?"
Mother: "If she can't lose the weight in seven days, we'd consider that as a last resort."

The film then moves on to a Jerry Springer-style chat show, where Bruno taunts a roomful of African-American women that he could have any of their husbands, and says his adopted baby is a great accessory with which to seduce guys. He claims he swapped the baby for an iPod in Africa.

Well, no one said it was going to be tasteful. Borat had the people of Kazakstan in uproar, from the president down. Quite what Austrians, reeling from the shocking evidence in the Josef Fritzl case, will make of Bruno, remains to be seen. ·