BREAKING THE WAVES (80)

Directed by: Lars von Trier

Starring: Emily Watson, Stellan Skarsgard, Katrin Cartlidge

The Pitch: On the remote north-west coast of Scotland, a young woman living in a very strict and austere religious community falls passionately in love with - and marries - an "outsider".

Theo Sez: Important viewing tip (at least for the benefit of future generations, since everyone reading this probably saw the movie ages ago) : don't ever watch this extraordinary film on video, unless it's a second viewing. Having seen it twice in the space of a week, first on the small screen then in a cinema, I can attest to its transformation once its outsize emotions find a screen big enough to contain them - and once the full intensity of Watson's rapt, bewitching performance is communicated. Which is not to say it's particularly moving (at least not for this stubbornly dry-eyed viewer), but that it's the most richly-imagined film in many years, a visionary blend of modern and pre-modern cinema - a dizzying, dazzling surface of jump-cuts and handheld camera overlaid on the unconditional (and unfashionable), near-masochistic love heroines gave their (invariably) undeserving men in films like CAROUSEL or LETTER FROM AN UNKNOWN WOMAN. It works because it refuses to "make allowances" for its heroine, leaping headlong into her volatile view of the world and finding no contradiction between her clownish lightness - grinning and rolling her eyes like a 90s Giulietta Masina, an impish child in a toy-store - and her white-hot sensuality, abandoning herself totally to her emotions ; and perhaps because it doesn't shirk from accepting that, even in a dour rational world, spirituality is as vital and natural as music (a lesser film might've ridiculed Bess's absurdly stern Calvinist order, but von Trier has too much respect for what they're trying to do, even if he thinks they're going about it the wrong way). Even if (like me) you don't entirely fall under its spell, you can't ignore it. It's a work of art, gruelling and hypnotic, a trip to a place you didn't even know existed ; it's unignorable.