Dancer in the Dark

The final installment in Lars von Trier's Golden Heart trilogy (which includes BREAKING THE WAVES and THE IDIOTS), DANCER IN THE DARK takes the director's original blend of heightened pseudorealism, fabricated melodrama, and the priciples of the Dogme 95 genre to a dangerously intense level. The story concerns Selma (Bj÷rk), a Czech immigrant living in 1964 Washington State with her 12-year-old son, Gene (Vladan Kostic). On the verge of blindness, Selma spends her days working in a factory, as well as performing other odd jobs, in order to save up enough money to pay for an operation that will cure Gene of the same disease. To pass the time, Selma fantasizes that her own life is a musical, one in which her friends join her in sweeping song-and-dance routines. After her neighbor Bill (David Morse) discovers Selma's hidden savings and steals them from her, she is forced to perform an act of salvation that will condemn her forever. As the innocent Selma, Bj÷rk is one of the most fragile and heartbreaking presences the screen has ever seen. Her unbearably moving performance is enough to keep the viewer mesmerized throughout, even amid the story gaps and inconsistencies. Featuring compassionate supporting turns by Catherine Deneuve and Peter Stormare, DANCER IN THE DARK is an unrelenting gut punch that will have sympathetic audiences quivering with uncontrollable emotion.

"...Utterly overpowering....Björk, in her movie debut, seems to be inventing a new style of film acting, if not an entirely new kind of human being..." - New York Times

"...Highly original..." - USA Today

"...[Bjork delivers] a performance that is warm, heart-breaking and harrowing....This'll be the most involving and traumatic cinematic experience of your year..." -- 5 out of 5 stars - Total Film

"...[The] musical numbers celebrate and reinvigorate convention....DANCER IN THE DARK is graced with a particular genius..." -- Rating: A - Entertainment Weekly

Ranked #1 in Entertainment Weekly's "Lisa Schwarzbaum's BEST MOVIES OF 2000" - Entertainment Weekly

"...The spellbinding DANCER IN THE DARK aims right for the heart and aces its target. And Bjork is thrilling, possessed of a face the camera embraces and an emotional range as compelling and varied as her music..." - Rolling Stone

"...It smashes down the walls of habit that surround so many movies. It returns to the wellsprings..." - Chicago Sun-Times

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