Breaking the waves

Breaking the Waves (titolo italiano, Le onde del destino) is not just the story about the love of a woman for her husband. This movie, directed in 1996 by Lars Von Trier, is a mixture of passion, love, religion that drive a woman to simply destroy herself to do everything for her husband. Bess, is a simple and childlike woman who has difficulty living without Jan when he is away on the oil platform in the Nordic sea, where he works. She prays for his return, till one day he has an accident and he gets paralyzed. She will start to think that it's her fault, because she wanted him so much at home with her. No longer able to make love, and mentally affected by the accident, Jan asks her to have sex with other men, and he will try to get some "joy" from the details she tells him about. Bess slowly begins to believe that what she is doing is the wish of God and she can't stop doing it.

Emily Watson is the fantastic actress playing Bess. She's absolutely one of my favourites, you may know her also from Gosford Park, The boxer, The life and death of Peter Sellers, Angela's ashes (in italiano, Le ceneri di Angela), Punch-Drunk love (titolo italiano, Ubriaco d'amore, opera singola di Paul Thomas Anderson, regista di Magnolia e Il petroliere - There will be blood).....

Lars Von Trier 4th movie, the first of the "Golden Heart" trilogy (the other two are The idiots and the wonderful Dancer in the dark), is not very faithful to the Dogma 95 realism, of which Von Trier was a founding member. But I think in this movie, what really matter is Bess and her character, her strength and passion. But, above all, her love. A sick love