MARGARET A. McGURK
Daring, disturbing,
frightening, hypnotic, romantic, haunting -- take your pick. Each one is
an equally valid description of Breaking the Waves.
The English-language drama from Danish writer-director Lars von Trier
won the grand jury prize this year at the Cannes Film Festival, a fistful
of ''best'' awards from the National Society of Film Critics and a Golden
Globe nomination for actress Emily Watson.
It claimed those honors the same way it claims the attention of the
audience -- with a story both gritty and otherworldly, an arresting visual
style, an array of flawless supporting actors and one inspired star turn.
The setting is a remote Scottish island dominated by a rigid
puritanical church in the 1970s. Ms. Watson plays Bess, a sheltered young
woman who, her relatives agree, ''isn't right in the head.'' When she
talks to God, He talks back.
When she marries an oil-rig worker named Jan, the couple immerse
themselves in an erotic partnership so intense that Bess is unhinged when
Jan must leave for his job.
She prays for his return, and when he comes home paralyzed, she is
convinced it is the cruel answer to her prayer.
Her belief in her ability to shape Jan's life becomes an obsession
after he urges her to take a lover as his surrogate. She gives up family,
friends and church as she tries literally to buy his life with a series of
increasingly reckless sexual encounters.
Bess' obsession is obviously lethal madness; Mr. von Trier's triumph is
to show it simultaneously as transcendent faith.
He accomplishes his goal with distinctive style, that includes
extensive (and sometimes dizzying) use of handheld cameras. He divides the
movies into ''chapters,'' introduced with mesmerizing images of the
landscape and unexpected slices of period music.
Mr. von Trier has described Breaking the Waves as ''a simple
love story.'' It's about love all right, and as simple as a thunderstorm.
From THE
CINCINNATI ENQUIRER
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