The Spectacle of Suffering: The 'Woman's Film' and Lars von Trier

Abstract

Many of the films of Lars von Trier can be situated within the context of the ‘woman's film’ and, more specifically, within its subgenre of the maternal melodrama. However, the films' intensification of the investments typically demanded by the woman's film could be said to function as a form of ‘provocation’ (Nobus 2007). This opens up a space within which to explore the spectacle of suffering in the woman's film in general and in von Trier's films in particular.