ABOUT THE FILM

Stewart:
It's about extremes of behavior and emotion. On one hand, you have Felix - who's a hateful washed-up hit guy; on the other hand, you have Bubba - a naive, loving, sweet, sweet, guy. And the idea was what would happen if you put those two together, and how they change each other. There's humor there as well as emotion and comedy. I love my actors. I wanted to put people in surprising roles... Stellan is extraordinarily subtle. Generally he does controlled roles on the whole. This has elements of small control but extreme humor as well, slapstick kind of humor. I think it was amusing for him to do that role as well. I think he's the kind of person who's brave enough to take on that and not step back from the extremes of Felix in that role.

Stellan:
If you see my films, you can see that I haven't done that many comedies really but, of course, I want to do comedy. I want to be funny as well as sad and dark and serious. I don't want to be serious and taken serious all the time. It was, of course, challenging. I haven't seen Kiss Kiss (Bang Bang) yet. I'll see it later this afternoon so I don't know if it works, but part of the comedy is within the realistic realm of the role, which means if you take it seriously enough, it will become comic.

Then there are a couple scenes with some nicotaine patches, which is much more phsyical comedy. More like the Marx Brothers department.  And I've never done anything like that before, so that was pretty scary but I tried to enjoy myself as much as possible when I did it. I still don't know if it worked, but I'll see it tonight. It worked. (off camera - it's funny) Ah, good, it's funny. I want it to be funny.

Link to the Interview online via Real Player (valid as of 8/27/04)

Emily Watson happened to be the festival's Jury President (and regardless of any prejudice), gave out the top prize to The Warriors. During an interview at the festival, she spoke about her role in Breaking the Waves:

"His (Von Trier's) confidence helped. I was terrified because I had never made a film before. The scenes were so emotional and so on the edge that I had to become swept away by the character’s passion. I just had to put my trust in Lars, but that was easy to do because he is used to gathering people around him like spirits. Stellan Skarsgård, who played the man I marry, taught me a huge amount - he had already appeared in more than 40 films both in Sweden and internationally, and it was great to meet up with him again in Dinard."