Sunday 19 April 2009

WEDDING TROUGH (BELGIUM/1974/THIERRY ZÉNO)

What drove me to watch this film? Morbid curiosity. A Belgian farmer falls for a sow and engages in several sex acts with her. As a result, she falls pregnant and bears a litter of pig-children (supposedly mutants - it isn't instantly clear). When the pig-children favour their mother for affection, the farmer is devastated and hangs them all. The sow, on discovering this, drowns herself in mud. Remorseful, the farmer hangs himself, feeling he has nothing to live for. The end. No, really.

Many suggest that this is set in the future and that our protagonist is the last remaining human on Earth, although it is really a timeless piece. What matters is that this man is incredibly isolated and is, perhaps as a result, chronically depressed (this may explain his romance with the pig, and the coprophagia). Throughout the film, we see him forcing dolls' heads on pigeons and arranging various substances in jars, maybe to pass the hours, maybe as an obsessive mania, nothing is for certain. What is certain is that this man is a sad case (the actor too if some of the more unsavoury moments are played out for real), and we as viewers have a disturbing experience intruding on his life. In conclusion, this film is in no way rewarding or enjoyable; nonetheless it stays with you and I will defend it on the basis that it is not exclusively exploitative and that there will never have to be another film like it.




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