Austrian critics attack slurs by Sacha Baron Cohen as comic persona hits the big screen
From Thomas Seifert in Vienna

Bruno, the flamboyant, gay, Austrian fashionista and fascist, is making some serious headlines in the Viennese press for comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, the creator of the outrageous character. "Bruno, pain in the neck" reads one headline in the liberal broadsheet Die Presse, reporting on the premiere of the Bruno movie in London.

When Cohen first announced that the follow-up to his hugely successful movie Borat would be a film based on his Austrian fashion-model and TV journalist persona, the media got edgy, worrying the movie would present a PR disaster for Austria. The anxious question on the website of the Austrian public broadcaster ORF read: "Will Nazi replace our Dirndl image?"

Austria's image was already battered by the trial earlier this year of Josef Fritzl, who imprisoned his daughter and their children in a cellar in the small town of Amstetten and who received a life-sentence in March. Jörg Haider, former leader of the FPÖ, the far-right-wing Freedom Party, created more negative headlines around the world when he died in a car crash in October 2008, while drunk and speeding. There were also rumours in the press that Haider had been bisexual.

Although Austrian diplomats often joke: "What is Austria's biggest diplomatic success? To make the world believe that Beethoven was Austrian and Hitler German", there is no denying the country has an image of being a hotbed for right-wingers.

Despite all this, Vienna is actually a cosmopolitan, open-minded city. The gay-friendly Life Ball, which was held for the twentieth time this spring in the City Hall, draws a huge, wild crowd.

Austria's capital, a city of imperial grandeur, is also a surprisingly cool and hip place. It regularly comes out on the top of consumer lists of Europe's best places to live.

So it comes as no surprise that some local media are not happy with seeing Austria become "the new Kazakhstan", thanks to Herr Bruno. Now these "fears have become a reality", reads an article in the tabloid newspaper Österreich.

Maybe everyone needs to calm down and remember Doulat Kuanyshev, who was the Kazak ambassador to Vienna in November 2006, when Borat was hitting the movie theatres. I interviewed him then.

"We now have to live with this movie. That's it. We can only work to rebut the prejudices that are thrown around in this movie," he said. The ambassador even tried to look at the bright side of Borat, saying: "You're sitting here in my office and I have a chance to talk about Kazakhstan. We are a hospitable people, our country is beautiful and tourists are always welcome."

So how does Austria's gay community view Cohen's latest movie? Christian Högl, chairman of Hosi, a gay lobby-group, is no fan of Cohen. He seems less concerned, however, with Bruno's sexuality than his politics, saying: "Maybe Cohen has a point here: why is he choosing an Austrian Nazi character? We should think about that."

Alfons Haider, host of Austrian television's version of Strictly Come Dancing seems to be relishing the prospect of Bruno-related international fame - he is said to have been the original inspiration for the character.

"The BBC came and paid me a visit and I told them the only thing Bruno and me have in common is that I'm Austrian and that I'm openly gay.

"Cohen wants to lay bare prejudice, racism and homophobia," Haider says, before adding that he's afraid the general public, when they're laughing at Cohen's jokes in the movies, are "maybe sympathising a bit with Bruno's views. That would be terrible".

He has only seen some snippets of the movie but says he's okay with making fun of gays, adding: "I've no problem with that. To have this good looking guy being depicted as a representative of Austrian gays is fine with me."

The "Nazi stuff" is what makes the left-leaning entertainer angry. He says: "Austria is not a fascist Nazi country.We have problems with the far right here, that's correct, but so have many other European countries these days, unfortunately."

But Haider - the "real Bruno", in his own words - says: "Cohen is a great entertainer. I hope he'll come here. I'd love to show him the real Austria." Then he adds, with a mischievous smile: "Von hinten." Meaning "from behind".