Cinema
Wedding Trough
Vase de Noces
Thierry Zéno · 1974
Synopsis
On a dilapidated farm in the Belgian countryside, a man lives alone among his animals, and not a word is spoken. He performs strange acts, fixes doll heads onto pigeons, collects their droppings in jars, mistreats animals. He falls in love with a sow, with which he has sexual relations, and the already precarious balance of the farm collapses when she gives birth.
Context
The film was written with Dominique Garny, who is its only performer and had just completed theatre training. Its soundtrack, entirely post-synchronised, mixes religious music and electronic compositions by Alain Pierre. The author said he had drawn on Freud, even more on Jung, and on Greek mythology, and had worked in a spirit of poetry rather than provocation. Presented in 1974 at the last Knokke experimental film festival, it was not recognised as a Belgian film by the French Community.
Who it is for
About eighty minutes, silent, in black and white. The film is very hard to sit through: animal cruelty, zoophilia, coprophagia.
Prizes and reception
It has circulated around the world between rejection and fascination, banned in some countries, and the Royal Belgian Film Archive has reissued it as a box set.
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