While we're on the subject of great performances about women losing the plot it seems fitting to move onto Emily Watson's first role in Lars von Trier's Breaking The Waves, in which Watson plays Bess McNeill, asked to sleep with other men by her husband after being severely injured in an industrial accident. This being von Trier there's plenty of fraught emotions - and emotional baggage - to deal with, mostly in desaturated imagery which heightens the desolate Scottish landscapes around which the action unfolds. Bess has some real psychological issues to deal with, but Watson teases these out of her character over the duration of the film rather than laying them all out on a platter - that is until the final act of self-destruction. Breaking The Waves isn't for everyone (a statement which applies to pretty much every single film by Lars von Trier), but there's no denying that Emily Watson threw herself into the role with a passion few actors can match.
