Von Trier Wins Wild Ovation for 'Dancer in the Dark'
By Lee Yanowitch CANNES, France (Reuters)

Danish director Lars Von Trier won a wild standing ovation at the Cannes Film Festival on Wednesday for his weepy melodrama ``Dancer in the Dark,'' emerging as the favorite for the Golden Palm that has eluded him twice. In the film, Icelandic pop singer Bjork made her cinema debut as a Czech immigrant and single mother working in a factory in rural 1960s America while French actress Catherine Deneuve plays her friend and guardian angel. Their moving performances and a jerky hand-held camera created an almost unbearable emotional tension throughout the film, leaving viewers crying just 30 minutes into the two-and-a-half-hour long film. Selma, Bjork's character, has a terrible secret: she suffers from a hereditary disease that gradually makes her go blind. She puts away every spare penny of her paltry wages, determined to pay for an eye operation for her son Gene to save him from the same fate. Whenever life becomes too much to bear, Selma daydreams of musical comedies, which are played out in the film with song and dance in vivid color -- a first for Von Trier. Nest Egg Stolen But everything goes wrong. Selma's vision worsens and she is fired from her job, only to find her nest egg has been stolen by the friendly policeman who was like a father to Gene. In a tussle over the money, Selma shoots the policeman with his own gun and is condemned to death by hanging. Bjork excels in carrying off her role as a simple-minded Mother Courage despite her lack of acting experience. ``Bjork is not an actress, which surprised me because she seems so professional on stage,'' Von Trier said at a rare news conference appearance. ``She was not acting in the film, she was feeling all the time, which was extremely hard for her and for everybody. ``This work with Bjork was very rewarding, but extremely painful for both of us. But now I realize it was the only way it could be,'' he added. As in ``Breaking the Waves'' and ``The Idiots'' Von Trier's last two films -- both of which were presented at Cannes -- the self-sacrifice of the woman character ends in horrible tragedy. But Von Trier elegantly fended off suggestions that he deliberately makes female characters suffer in his movies: ``I'm sorry, I didn't do it on purpose. It's not that I'm trying to make a statement or anything. These women are strong, so it's not degrading in any way. And I'm not trying to say that people should sacrifice themselves. they shouldn't.'' Von Trier's camera work, entirely in video, imbues seemingly empty scenes with terribly intense emotion. Deneuve sought to dispel rumors that the film was as tense on the set as it was on the screen. ``About the man, I will tell you nothing, it's very personal. As for the work of the director, I've learned what I wanted to learn. He is not sure of himself, but he is sure of what he does,'' she said. ``I love his films, which are terribly lyrical and terribly melodramatic,'' she added.