Thursday, August 18, 2011

Breaking the Waves

Breaking the Waves   Denmark   1996   no stars

Directed by art-house darling Lars von Trier, so already you know it’s going to be more painful than entertaining. Bess (Emily Watson) is a simple-minded girl living in a tiny town in the north of Scotland. She falls in madly in love and marries Jan (Stellan Skarsgard) who has come to the town to work on an offshore oil rig. Shortly after they are married, he breaks his neck on the job. Medical care in the tiny town is limited so he spends the rest of the movie in bed, clinging to life. Bess is of course convinced he will recover, and nurses him herself. She doesn’t seem to notice that the combination of a head injury and drugs has made him insane, so when he encourages her to have sex with every man she meets because he can’t have her himself, she does so. This movies is creepy and gross. It’s all about style and ideas, and nothing real about SCI. Jan’s injury is just a plot device, nothing more. Plus he’s not even attractive. Devo Girl hated it.

1 comment:

  1. Absolutely horrible. I was sick to my stomach after watching this.