If you ever, wonder what 1996's 'Babe' would be like, if it was directed by an insane art house Belgium director, named Thierry Zéno, then here you go. 'Wedding Trough' AKA 'Vase de noces' is a 1970s art house silence film, about a crazy disturb nameless farmer, (Dominique Garny) who falls in love with his pig, which leads to first bestiality, rape, and then, murder, when the relationship to him, has turned soured. Without spoiling the movie, too much, I have to say, this film is clumsy as a hog on ice. It really tries hard to be, a smart avant-garde, but it come across as more dull & pretentious, than ever. As one scholar puts it, people all over the world have made swine stand for "extremes of human joy or fear, celebration, ridicule, and repulsion." Sadly, this film fails to show much of that. Its content is as a dead pig in the sunshine. Very offensive, rather than beautiful. The film does really does pushes the boundaries of what is accepted. Yet. I'll, at least, try to understand this film on its own terms. For this reason, everything in it is left to interpretation. Synonymous with negative attributes, especially greed, gluttony, and uncleanliness, and these ascribed attributes have often led to critical comparisons between pigs and humans. In the film, they try to show this, by having the farmer father pig mutant babies, however, since the movie had no funds to make convincing half-human pig children. They just used regular piglets to show the farmer, humanity side. The farmer, at first, tries hard to teach and treat the animals as if they were human beings. He allows them to share the dinner table, his clothes, his bed, and his house. This is foreshadowed by the man putting a doll head on a pigeon. However, he gets frustration, due to their lack of manners and their instinct animalistic behavior. In the end, he is the one that degenerate, the furthest, showing how beastly, human being can become; which is foreshadowed, by the cutting of the head of the hen, in the beginning of the film. If you look further, into the black and white film, it seem to me, that the man is a condemned soul that living in what looks like, a post Rapture world, as there is nobody else, around, besides him and Beelzebub (AKA the Pig). Because of this, the man feels like he is dirty, thus he act like an animal. He's mentally disturbed. However, I don't feel, he's autism, like the filmmakers would love to claim. Being autism, doesn't cause people to eat their own feces. No, this type of a behavior has to come, with the setting, in which, he lives. Without mankind to judge him; it allows the beast inside the man to do, whatever, he wants. Typically, the film works the same way, as if allows the audience to watch it, without being judge. Yet, I have a feeling, the majority of people that, somehow like, this film, has that same disturb mental mindset. In my opinion, I think all these scenes, where he demonstrates bizarre behavior is not right. I don't like this movie, at all, not only, due to the large amount of animal cruelty, but badly paced, it is. The scene of him eating his feces lasts for almost half an hour, nearly a third of the movie. It really badly edited. Not only that, but the film is way too repetitive. In short, the film seem, least than an art house film, and more like weird fetish porno. It even has that weird techno mixed with classical music soundtrack to add to the pain. It seem like it was made for the purpose of sexual arousal. After all, some cultures believe that the pig represent the symbol of virility, strength, and fertility and no amount of disagreement against Kafkaesque and Freudian theories on human automata can delay that. While this film never held a theatrical release, it did have a limited festival run, building its notoriety around the world. One such, screening was at the Perth International Film Festival of 1975, in which, upset, the audiences, so much, that it was latter essentially ban in Australia and New Zealand, where it remained largely unchanged since then, due to in part that the film still violates Australian obscenity laws. Its controversial subject and explicit execution continue to create chaos, in other countries as, others refused to show it as the claims that all of the pig sex scenes were simulated, might not be, true. In the end, "Vase de noces" has become one of the rarest films that isn't a "lost film", because of that. It wasn't until 2009, when the German distributor Camera Obscura and the Swedish company Njuta Films released Region 2 copies of the movie, that the film found its way on video and the dark places of the internet. There is also a documentary, about the making of the film, out there, but I have yet, to watch it. Overall: I really couldn't tolerate, watching this explicit movie at all, even with my weird sense of morbid curiously. The reason, why, I watch it, in the first place, was, because I foolish, mistook it, for the 1981's comedy, 'Porky' at the time. In the end, I really can't recommended, watching this sadistically evil film. Like the Jewish, & Muslims cultures, it just better to stay away from this pig. Indeed, this movie indeed shows, that you can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig. Like the Great Porky Pigs says, 'That's all, folks'.
Review of Wedding Trough
