It’s not so often we come across people who serve us their breakup story with a warm, unadulterated smile. Sean Baker is one of them. Should you ever find yourself looking into his deep blue eyes and shiny white teeth while listening to his recounting of a particular date night, you might well take him for a sociopath, telling you with a mischievous grin and trembling voice about how a trip to Lars Von Trier’s Breaking The Waves (1996) ended a relationship. Looking back at his first encounter with the Danish avant-garde filmmaker, Baker remembers telling himself: “Oh, this is special. It looks beautiful, it’s speaking to me.” If Baker found himself in conversation with the Dogme 95 director that night, his then-girlfriend, unperturbed by the on-screen drama and leaving every 15 minutes for cigarette breaks, clearly felt left out. It was in this moment, Baker recounts, that he knew their relationship didn’t have a future, a memory he looks back at as fondly as other people might at their wedding night.
