BREAKING THE WAVES
A film review by Ben Hoffman
Copyright 1997 Ben Hoffman
The ads say "On over 75 Ten Best lists," to which I say that I would hate to believe that is true.. This endlessly boring film took almost 165 minutes before, thankfully, it came to an end. What is it with editors who will not cut long dull scenes, who will not delete unnecessary action? What is it with critics who go wild over pretentious films?
Breaking the Waves is about miracles and having chats with God; Bess (Emily Watson) talks to God and from what she is saying and at what she is smiling, He apparently is on the same channel. However, the advice He seems to be handing her is really not very good, ungodly, and gets her into an awful lot of trouble.
Bess, who has a sweet expressive face, lives in a small town in Scotland. She marries. Hwr husband (Stellen Skarsgard) works on a ship at sea doing something with pipes and oil (?). When an accident occurs and Bess's husband is paralyzed, bedridden and with a prognosis of his never being able to walk again nor really improving, Bess takes it very hard.
Wife Bess is one loyal woman, always at his bedside. When her husband says he would like her to have sex with "someone" and then come back and tell him about it, it would be as if he and she had had sex. Sure. First Bess says she cannot do that but then she hits on the doctor. He very ethical will not touch her. While she lies in the nude on a mattress, inviting him, he tells her to get dressed. But there are many others in the city, on ships, in bars, on a bus, who accept her offers.
Bess is doing this for her husband who, it is quite obvious to even this layman, is on his deathbed. As Bess tells everyone, she is not making love, she is only offering a sacrifice for her husband, hoping God will work a miracle.
Also stars Katrin Cartlidge, Jean-Marc Barr and Udo Kier. Directed by Lars Von Trier.
Rating 2. Bytes
4 bytes = Superb 3 bytes = Too good to miss 2 bytes = Average 1 byte = Save your money
Ben Hoffman
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews