Grade: B-

Verdict: Music, fantasy and emotional manipulation.

Details: Starring Björk, Catherine Deneuve and David Morse. Rated R for some violence. Two hours, 25 minutes.

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Review: Winner of this year's top prizes for best film and actress, "Dancer in the Dark" earned as much booing as applause at the Cannes Film Festival. Both audacious and old-fashioned, emotionally gripping but also brutally manipulative, it's the kind of movie you'll either love or hate.

The latest from Danish auteur Lars von Trier ("Breaking the Waves," "The Idiots"), this revisionist musical stars Icelandic pop singer Björk as Selma, a Czechoslovakian single mother who's relocated with her son Gene (Vladica Kostic) to the Pacific northwest of the 1960s. (The movie was actually shot in Sweden and Denmark, since von Trier refuses to fly.)

By day, Selma works at a tedious but dangerous job on a factory assembly line, alongside friend and protector Kathy (Catherine Deneuve, veteran of the musical "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg"). Nights are spent rehearsing for the local theater's clumsy production of "The Sound of Music." Her relationship with Gene is deeply loving, but somewhat stern. When his birthday comes, she buys him no presents. We soon understand her frugality: She's swiftly going blind from a hereditary disease, and so will Gene unless she saves enough money for an operation to spare his sight.

If this sounds like a self-sacrificing "woman's film" - "Stella Dallas," say - you're right. In outline, von Trier's movie is resolutely old-fashioned as it winds toward a tearjerker conclusion. But the writer-director shakes up expectations.

First is the look of "Dancer," shot in desaturated colors with hand-held cameras. The choice creates a faux documentary feeling, bringing a sense of spontaneity to a simplistic plot that develops the impacable force of Greek tragedy.

Then there are the song-and-dance numbers. Trying to understand her love of Hollywood musicals, Selma's would-be suitor Jeff (Peter Stormare) asks her, "Why do they start to sing and dance all of a sudden?" That's not exactly what happens here. The sequences (composed by Björk) are fantasies springing from Selma's mind in times of boredom, crisis, denial. They rise out of the rhythms Selma hears (factory machinery, the rumble of a passing train) and the screen re-saturates with color.

The musical numbers are the high point of "Dancer in The Dark," mainly because they're so peculiar. The songs lyrics and music manage to be off-kilter and a little naive, the sort of thing you could imagine Selma making up on the spot. The choreography is also rudimentary. You admire the chutzpah of the concept, the risk the actors take of looking stupid. (Deneuve maintains an amusingly sour expression when Björk cajoles her into a dance routine.) Some of the numbers work better than others. But one sequence, set on a railroad trestle, achieves the shivery, spooky beauty of a dream.

Unfortunately, midway through the movie, von Trier shows his hand in an excruciating confrontation between Selma and her neighbor Bill (the fine David Morse). After this sequence, the movie has only one possible way to go, straight to bummersville.

Like Emily Watson's character in "Breaking the Waves," Selma is a kind of holy innocent, a woman-child who seems likelier to be Gene's big sister than his mother. In "Waves," Watson played a fey newlywed who whored herself to death in order to get God to heal her injured husband. In "Dancer," Selma makes a similar noble sacrifice, and you can't help feeling there's something a little sadistic, even misogynistic in the way von Trier snares his heroines in degrading plot twists.

Nevertheless, he manages to generate big emotions out of meager material, mainly thanks to the performances he gets from his actors. Björk, a virtual acting novice (her sole film experience was a supporting role in the 1987 Icelandic film "Juniper Tree") is sometimes astonishingly effective. She's a live flame, a fragile presence you feel like protecting. She and von Trier fell out during the shooting, because of the emotional toll of playing the role, and the evidence is onscreen.

The Cannes voters have become almost predictable in awarding films dealing with the grimmest material. Last year's winner was "Rosetta," a slice-of-life, working-class slog that was so earnest it was nearly unwatchable.

Björk's work is the best reason to see "Dancer," and since she's sworn off filmmaking after this experience, it may be your only chance to see her act.

If nothing else, von Trier's film is certain to generate debate between viewers who dig it or diss it. But his gimmick isn't as novel as he may think. This mix of grime and fantasy has been done before, and better, in British writer Dennis Potter's "Pennies from Heaven" and "The Singing Detective." In the end, "Dancer in the Dark" packs a wallop. You just might not appreciate the buttons von Trier pushes to achieve his effects.

— Steve Murray, Cox News Service