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The film takes place within the Seventies, in a distant northern Scottish village. Bess (Emily Watson), a sweet-faced and trusting woman, is “not fairly proper within the head,” and her close-knit group shouldn’t be happy by her choice to marry Jan (Stellan Skarsgard), who works on one of many huge oil rigs within the North Sea. However she loves Jan an excessive amount of that when the helicopter bringing him to the marriage is delayed, she hits him in a fury. He’s a tall, light man with a heat smile, and lets her flail away earlier than embracing her in his huge arms.
She is a virgin, however so desirous to be taught the secrets and techniques of marriage that she accosts her new husband within the powder room on the reception after the ceremony, telling him eagerly, “You may love me now!” After which, “What do I do?” The miracle of sexual expression transforms her, and she or he is grateful to God for having given her Jan and his love and his physique.
In the meantime, downstairs on the ceremony, Jan’s shipmate and Bess’ grandfather scowl at each other; the shipmate crushes a beer can, and the grandfather picks up a lemonade glass and breaks it in his bloody hand.
We be taught somewhat about Bess, who had a breakdown when her brother died. Her closest buddy is her sister-in-law, Dodo (Katrin Cartlidge), a nurse who stays within the distant district principally due to her. Bess belongs to a strict sect the place girls don’t converse in church, and the sermon over the physique at a funeral is perhaps, “You’re a sinner and can discover your home in hell.” Bess’ grandfather observes sourly, “We’ve got no bells in our church.” Jan is critically injured in an accident on the rig. He’s paralyzed from the neckdown, and the native physician tells Bess he might by no means stroll once more. “You do not know Jan!” she says fiercely. At some point Jan asks her to discover a man and make like to him, “for my sake. After which inform me about it.” Bess doesn’t like this concept, however she does what Jan asks. Dodo is enraged: “Are you sleeping with different mento feed his sick fantasies? His head’s filled with scars–he’s as much as his eyeballs in medicine.” It’s certainly by no means made fairly clear why Jan, a very good man, has made this request of the girl he loves. That isn’t the purpose. The purpose is that Bess, together with her fierce religion, believes that someway her sacrifice can redeem her husband and even remedy him. As his situation grows worse, her habits grows extra determined; she has herself taken out to an enormous ship the place even the port prostitutes refuse to go, due to the way in which they’ve been handled there.
