Director Lars von Trier never fails to shock and challenge one's sensibilities with his pictures. "Dancer in the Dark" and "Dogville" are two recent examples I've viewed, but this is one that will probably make you the most squeamish. In it, actress Emily Watson portrays Bess McNeil, a woman who's slavish devotion to a near comatose husband exposes her to shame and ridicule when she attempts to honor his wish that she see other men and report back to him on her sexual escapades. Though at one point, husband Jan (Stellan Skarsgård) rethinks his idea and writes a conflicted note stating "Let me die. I'm evil in head". That would have been enough, one would think, to deter Bess from proceeding with her destructive behavior. At a certain point, one must come to grips with the idea that perhaps the simple minded Bess actually does suffer from some form of mental illness to invite the seamy and destructive relationships she encounters. Why else return to the same ship to encounter a pair of thugs who violated her once before?Another reviewer for the film here on IMDb writes, "This sounds like a grungy tale, but von Trier tells it with such humanism and focus on his themes that we never feel like he is rubbing our faces in drear." Well excuse me, but that's exactly how I felt about the picture, so you'll have to leave me out of the foregoing generalization. Personally, if one's own perverse definition of love and how it can lead to destructive behaviors is your thing, then have at it, but this film does nothing for me, demonstrating once again that von Trier's film making appeals to a segment of film goers that don't mind immersing themselves in sordid and pointless dramas. If there's one thing about the picture that's worth mentioning on a positive note, it would actually be Emily Watson's role in the story, as she arcs her character through a complex set of emotions which leaves the patient viewer drained and dispirited. If that was von Trier's objective, then I guess he succeeded. And by the way, the near comatose husband, who's doctors insisted he would never walk again, closes out the picture hobbling around on crutches, hearing imaginary bells that aren't really there. Best not try to explain it.

When this film was finished I just had to sit calmly and let out some of the mood I was stuck in. My tears were running, and there were many others sitting behind in the cinema. Even when the marquee was finished and the lights came on, the sobbing was still noticeable. Never have so many been sitting behind for so long. I went outside and had a cigarette together with a friend couple. We just stood there petrified and nobody said anything. After a while a guy came wrestling out the door with a big cardboard figure of Leslie Nielsen, an advert for Spy Hard, and he even carried it on to the smallest car around. It broke the ice and we just had to laugh. This says a lot about what Breaking The Waves did to us. I haven't dared to see it again. If you haven't - do it.

Love above all. That seems to be the theme, the leit-motiv of this movie. However although this theme could deliver the necessary ingredients to make a good movie, it becomes too strange to be good. A young naive girl falls in love with a man a bit older than her but who corresponds deeply to her love. Their mutual love is physically and spiritually overwhelming. All this takes place in a remote place of northern Scotland where a puritanical and fundamentalist religious community dominates and morally rules. The husband works at sea in an oil rig and suffers a serious accident there which breaks his neck making him totally disabled. This fact unchains a series of actions and reactions also in psychological and affective terms, some of them very odd, uncommon and perverted, namely in the sexual field that reveal that they both have neurotic personalities which makes those events a bit difficult to be accepted in terms of reality or to have an aesthetic value in terms of cinema or literature. This movie is of some value only for its good direction and excellent performance of all actors and actresses.

If I had a dollar for every time 'devastating' was used to describe a Lars Von Trier film, I would have...well, a lot of money. He continually relishes on images that shock the mind and soul. He is admired for his ability to not hold back. His ties to Dogme 95 are evident, but paradoxically, here he makes it a deliberate stylistic endeavour; his favoured nervy, hand-held style, the washed out palette, the graininess of the image. How ironic that in the pursuit of authenticity and simplicity he had taken an extra, unnatural step - the filtered look of the film was achieved by transferring the stock to video and back again. The desired impression is the guise of naturalism and realism, as if we were observing the events ourselves. But this collapses on itself when we are the only ones in the scene with Emily Watson. Suddenly the fragility takes on a different meaning. We become perverse intruders on a mental breakdown, but there is no one here save for the audience, so it is performance we are witnessing. To her credit, Watson keeps us guessing whilst the script is more direct. It presents to us a child, without any tangible prospects or abilities, who throws tantrums when control is wrested away from her because of the real world's demands. She counts the days on the calendar until her beloved Jan returns, but this isn't enough - Von Trier feels the need to throw in a crude, stick figure drawing as though she is a kindergartner with a crush. The first time she responds to her own prayer in a deeper intonation (God is Irish, apparently), it is mildly humorous, but by the end it is tragic. Watson is good enough to seed doubt in our minds. When her faith begins to waver, these prayers lose their mystical quality and just once, she responds as God in her normal voice. She shows glimpses of Bess' logic and reason when she wrests with her own conscience and selfishness. In the very early beginnings, she acknowledges the camera and invites us into her mind, cheekily grinning and almost winking at what is to come. There are brief moments of heart and stability; see how Watson makes phone sex endearing and cute, how she pauses and hesitates to be explicit, because her religion has coded her against it. So to dive into the deep end, and go against these teachings must demonstrate incredible strength and willpower, must it not? A oft criticism of the film is that it treats Bess not only in childish terms, but as a surrogate for battering, being shoved along without agency and subject to continually harsher abuse. She is confined by the patriarchal constructs of the religion, raised a virgin and cursed to hell for her sins (but those sins which are an act of bravery and pure love). A gender reversal would not only be illogical and radical, but conjure none of the shock. Von Trier is vague about the origins of her development and capabilities, and hastily sidesteps this dilemma. He answers the true question with his final sequences, which are steeped in Christian allegory: the public denouncing by the church (the Pharisees), the Christlike sacrifice by taking the burden of sin, the desecration of the grave for and the spiritual rebirth (at sea), with the bells signalling the miracles that we have witnessed. It's religious propaganda, and not subtle at that; Bess must be put through figurative hell (the result of her own sin) before she finally gains her martyrdom. And it is typical Von Trier, a cruel joke played by a cruel god. She dies with the knowledge that she has failed her husband, and is going to literal hell. Only then can Jan begin to walk again.