Bjork Movie Debuts at N.Y. Film Festival

Sept. 22 -- Picture a greasy factory, filled with the usual sweaty workers and moving machinery, and an energetic group of chorus girls.

A glitzy musical is the sort of surprise event that can happen inside a dingy mill if you’re living in a world created by director Lars Von Trier. His new film, Dancer in the Dark, is a modern-day musical mixing fantasy with reality and has fast become a favorite on the international festival circuit. It took the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival and is a highlight of the New York Film Festival, with a limited theatrical release set for October.

The workers in the rural American town depicted happen to be French actress Catherine Deneuve and Icelandic singer Björk in her acting debut.

The acting gig came as a surprise opportunity for Björk, who got her start with the Sugarcubes in the 1980s and has since established a solo career using her expressive and piercing singing style. She was initially hired just to score the film, but soon became its star. The experience, she says, was something akin to “jumping off a cliff.”

Acting Like a Star

But taking the plunge into acting worked out fine for Björk, who picked up the best actress award at Cannes.

She spent a year writing the musical score for Dancer in the Dark, and during that time found herself increasingly drawn to the lead character of Selma, an imaginative Czech immigrant who is going blind while working tirelessly to make enough money for an operation so her son will not suffer the same fate.

Björk credits Von Trier with convincing her to play this character, with whom she formed a sort of kinship.

“I felt like defending her, I think I’m very innocent as an actress, naïve … the only way I could to do this was from the love of this girl,” Björk said at a Lincoln Center news conference with her fellow castmates.

Selma smiles throughout her hardship, escaping reality while finding music in the repetitive sounds of the factory machines and picturing herself in big Hollywood musicals.