2. Grace - Dogville (2003)
Dogville is one of the downright strangest movies to have emerged in recent times, something that is in no part helped by the fact that it stems from the mind of notorious provocateur Lars Von Trier, and because it it takes place entirely on a sound stage. There are no walls, just lines drawn on the ground used to map a village, though the film is both awe-inspiring and frustrating in equal mesure (in this case, one man's masterpiece is certain to be another man's hell). And then there's Nicole Kidman, who, as Grace, arrives in Dogville at the mercy of its inhabitants, and ends up becoming the whipping girl for all their anxieties and prejudices. She is mesmerizing throughout the entirety of
Dogville, mainly because she plays such a difficult role with the right amount of careful honesty. But once Von Trier's three-hour-long meditation on American livin' begins to brutalise Grace, it never slows down. As an actress, she handles the mean transition perfectly, and cleverly avoids clawing for the audiences' sympathy. A lesser actress would've derailed the entire movie, but Kidman, on true form, prevails.