http://www.nypost.com/entertainment/11463.htm

New York Post  2000-09-25

By Megan Turner


"Last Picture Show"


SHE gives us a fleeting glimpse of a prodigious natural talent, scoops 
up a Best Actress award at Cannes, and then, like the will-o'-the-wisp 
she resembles, Bjork is gone. 

The fey Icelandic singer says her first acting performance - a 
wrenching, emotionally naked turn as a childlike Czech immigrant in Lars 
von Trier's musical melodrama "Dancer in the Dark" - will also be her 
last. 

She stresses, however, that this is not because of the famously 
difficult time she had on the Danish set, where she immersed herself so 
thoroughly in her put-upon character that she "started to become her." 

Nor is she gun-shy because of the reportedly fraught relationship she 
had with the equally intense, idiosyncratic von Trier. 

"I don't think I will [act again]," Bjork says during a visit to New 
York for the film's premiere. "But I want to make very clear that that's 
not because of this film. 

"I will jump off a cliff any day - that's not what I'm scared of - and 
I'll still be attracted to eccentrics, there's no stopping me there. 

"Before the film, I was never going to act; I was going to devote my 
life to music." 

The 34-year-old single mother, renowned for her eccentricity and free-
spirited ways, released her first album at 11, achieved international 
fame as the lead singer of the Sugarcubes, and has released a string of 
successful solo albums. 

She says she made an exception for von Trier's film because "there was 
such a creative smell in the air" but now all she wants to do is "go 
back to my musical nest." 

"Dancer," which won the prestigious Palme d'Or and opened the New York 
Film Festival Friday, is one of the year's most controversial films. 
Although the movie itself has bitterly divided the critics - it's been 
called variously a masterpiece and a sham - Bjork's performance has 
received nothing but praise. 

Bjork, who also composed and sings on the soundtrack that accompanies 
"Dancer's" fantasy sequences, says she decided to talk publicly about 
the film because she was tired of the rumors. 

"I didn't do any press for nine months because I don't believe in 
spelling out secrets about the creative process," she says. 

"But then I just said, 'I have to defend it,' because this whole drama 
that's going on about how difficult it was on set, I didn't experience 
that at all." 

She says that, contrary to rumor, she and von Trier's relationship, 
while intense and volatile, was productive. 

"We were completely linked, and it was very easy for me to surrender to 
a director and be someone else's tool - I found that very exciting." 

Problems arose when other crew members began "chopping up" her songs. 
"I'd say, 'You can't cut 11 bars out of this song because it doesn't 
make any sense' and they'd say, 'You're just an actress, shut up.' 

"Every time me and Lars were on our own, everything was fine. We always 
found a way to compromise; it was more that the people on set started 
gossiping. 

"The whole thing was very, very difficult but we solved 5,000 riddles, 
me and Lars, and I'm very proud of that." 

Catherine Deneuve, who plays Bjork's best friend in "Dancer," says her 
co-star "suffered so much" during filming that she's not surprised at 
her decision to quit while she's ahead. 

"It's true that there are a lot of films that I can imagine she could 
do, but I'm sure she won't go back to it," she says. "I think music is 
her life and she breathes for music and she doesn't want to cry for 
films." 

But the veteran French actress believes that, sometimes, one great 
performance is enough. 

"I think sometimes you can be the actress of one film," says Deneuve. 
"And I think she is the actress of that film. No matter what happens in 
10 years she will always be remembered for that film. And, even if she 
does only music for 20 years, people will still ask her about it." 

Bjork has her own theories on why reaction to the film has been so 
strong. 

"I think right now it's the pioneer's movie, and I don't necessarily 
mean that makes it a good or bad film," she says. 

"It's like the first people who went to Antarctica - it's quite a brutal 
thing, it's not a holiday, so you're witnessing a lot of not-very-sweet 
situations and also a lot of mistakes. 

"Pioneering has got that experimental nature about it - you do 29 
terrible things and then you do one genius thing, but you're willing to 
go through the 29 things instead of just playing it safe and doing one 
more film like all the other ones."