Katrin Cartlidge gives troubled women an inward intensity without making them seem remote. We value her firmness most of all: in Breaking the Waves, she provides welcome relief from a film determined to make us suffer.
Fi1m perspective
In Breaking the Waves (1996), Katrin Cartlidge's Dodo McNeill brings a firmness that the film badly needs. Lars von Trier keeps returning to Bess's vulnerability, while Emily Watson makes the suffering painfully convincing. We were grateful for Cartlidge's steadiness because the repeated pressure on Bess had begun to wear us down. She gives us someone else to attend to, with a different way of meeting distress. It is a supporting performance that matters to how much of the film we can bear.
The breakthrough had come with Sophie in Mike Leigh's Naked (1993), a raw ensemble drama that established her as a key collaborator. International work followed with Before the Rain (1994) and then Breaking the Waves. Leigh brought her back for Career Girls (1997), as Hannah Mills at different ages in a story concerned with memory and friendship. That part is a useful corrective to a reputation built so heavily around damaged women. Playing the same person at different ages asks for more than a capacity to show distress.
Anders Refn's editing gives the performances room in Breaking the Waves, and Cartlidge benefits from that patience. Her contribution has time to register, without her needing to compete with Watson for our attention. We recommend the film, with a firm warning about the suffering von Trier asks us to accept. Joachim Holbek's music adds emotional pressure that the acting hardly needs. Cartlidge cannot cure that excess, but her steadiness helps us stay with a film that sometimes pushes too hard.
Calling her an actor for unconventional parts tells us little about the acting. Claire Dolan (1998) gave her the lead in an American independent film, playing a prostitute seeking change. We would not ask for a more conventional part simply to prove her worth. Dodo already shows how much she can contribute without carrying the story. Approach Breaking the Waves with care, and give Cartlidge some of the attention its leading performance rightly demands.
Biography
Katrin Cartlidge was an English actress. She began her career in theatre and made her screen debut as Lucy Collins in the Channel 4 soap opera Brookside (1982–1983). She later appeared in films including Mike Leigh's Naked (1993), in which she played Sophie.
Cartlidge worked frequently with Leigh, starring as Hannah Mills in Career Girls (1997), for which she won the Evening Standard Film Award for Best Actress. She played Dodo McNeill in Lars von Trier's Breaking the Waves (1996) and appeared in Before the Rain (1994), Topsy-Turvy (1999), From Hell (2001) and No Man's Land (2001). She died in 2002.
