Dancer in the Dark
(Rated R)

By Amy Diaz
HippoPress.com

Icelandic rock star Bjork stars in Dancer in the Dark, the most depressing movie musical ever.

When I say the most depressing musical, I'm including not just those Disney cartoons with dead parents and Les Miserable, but also the Pat Boone version of State Fair.

Selma (Bjork) is a Czech immigrant living in Washington state in 1964. A single mom, she works in a factory and takes in other odd jobs to support herself and her son Gene. They live in a trailer in the backyard of their police officer landlord (David Morse). Selma kills time at her monotonous job by daydreaming herself into musicals - a dangerous hobby because the nearly blind Selma can barely see what she's doing even when she is paying attention. Her friend Kathy (Catherine Deneuve) tries to help Selma cover for her approaching blindness and save money to buy an operation that will keep her son from a similar fate.

While musicals and her son's well-being keep her going, Selma finds herself the object of one man's admiration and the victim of another man's theft. From here, Dancer in the Dark - which is weirder than I've made it seem - detours into the truly bizarre, resulting in a murder.

The musical numbers in the movie are Selma's daydreams. While the rest of the movie has a sort of gray screen over it, the songs are filmed in a warm golden light. The music comes from the noises of the factory machines or passing trains. While by themselves the sounds and the songs meld seamlessly, on screen each waltz through Selma's fantasies is abrupt and throw's the story off track.

Despite the overall strangeness of the movie, the acting - when no one's trying to sing or dance - is good. Though her character acts like someone who is a little "special" in the head, Bjork does a good job portraying both Selma's devotion to her son and her surreal approach to life.

Deneuve does a good job playing Selma's grounded friend. She adds some much needed reality to the movie. Morse plays a character even more deluded than Selma. He portrays a seemingly gentle man turned ruthless by desperation.

Not surprisingly, the music is the best part of this musical. Bjork's songs are beautiful and strange like all her work. While on film some of the musical numbers (to include both song and dance) go on forever and seem to make no sense, as single songs played over the radio - without the hindrance of the movie - the tracks come alive.

Like many an indie, Dancer in the Dark seemed to blow its wad on concept and leave nothing for execution. Stick to radio play of "I've Seen It All", Bjork's duet with Radiohead's Thom Yorke, and wait for this weird, dark little experiment to debut on the Sundance channel.

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