BREAKING THE WAVES

(recommended)

Bess McNeill (Emily Watson) prays repeatedly in Lars von Trier's Breaking the Waves, looking for respite from the spiritual chill that pervades her strictly Calvinist community in 1970s Scotland. When her husband Jan returns from his oil rig paralyzed by an accident on the job, he begins insisting that Bess have sex with other men, so that she can provide him with detailed descriptions (as a way to insure his recovery). Von Trier has said that he conceived the film as an exploration of what's "good."Breaking the Waves uses Bess as a way to get at that idea in ways that are a little too ordinary: you've seen women trapped like this before. The movie is looking to make you feel yucky, and it does.

— Cindy Fuchs

(Ritz Five; Ritz 12)