Wedding Trough (1974)

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'.

Many of the reviews for this film are misleadingly similar, and seem to be copying one another while leaving out key details.** SPOILERS ** PLOT: A young man living entirely by himself in an abandoned church or monastery courts his pig, breeds with her, and then tries to care for the piglets. When they prove unruly at mealtime, he hangs them. The mother goes mad and drowns. In grief, the man buries himself alive with her, has a vision of himself, then returns to the monastery, where he seems to atone by eating nettles, and then eats and drinks his own waste. Finally, he hangs himself and seems to float in the air like a kite after his death.And yes, as one person says, there is bestiality and feces-eating--"it's called the pig-f*cking movie,"don't act astonished. :p If you want the director's opinion, here is his description, more or less: "A solitary man lives in an abandoned farm. Its territory: ground, water, air and fire. He loves a sow tenderly. Three piglets are born from their union. Family knittings, feeding-bottles and meals will have only a time. Death grinds: the sow commits suicide and the alchemist is made crucible." PROBLEMS WITH THESE DESCRIPTIONS: The young man is not necessarily a farmer. He's the only human, he has to get food somehow, but we never see any crops. Moreover, while the director describes the setting as an abandoned farm, it is clearly a monastery, abandoned church, or school, considering that the man regularly rings the bell. (So does the pig once.) This is one of the more intriguing gestures in the film--who is he trying to summon with the bell, or what memory is he replaying? A note: there has always been that bourgeois "disgust" with the goings-ons at places like farms, such as slaughtering chickens, boinking animals, the mere presence of manure, the violence and open sexuality of animals (birds in this case), the "grotesqueness" of actual birth, and the general "muckiness" of life. Criticizing the film for depicting these realities (of life itself) is as gratuitous as the film is said to be.More errors: the IMDb database says it is a continuity error that the man goes into the pig's grave with clothes on and emerges naked. This is clearly intentional on the director's part, as the man undergoes some kind of rebirth.It's also seems inadequate to describe the whole of the man's existence as "insane". He may be separated from people, but he is not alone. He doesn't even only have one choice of mate (there are female chickens and turkeys). The director states the alchemist becomes crucible after the sow's death—not even that has to be madness.This isn't to say I get all of the symbolism. It's unclear to me why he keeps a record of everything he kills in his glass jars (a record of death?), but it's clear that he gives that up for his final experiment, which is about transformation (the whistling teapot is the total synthesis of this symbol: air, water, fire, and "dirt" i.e., feces), overcoming death. That he eats the alchemical mess he makes is automatic. Eating is an ancient symbol for the alchemical process (it may even be the basis). He's seeking immortality, hence the celestial chorus music (not simply as a perverse counterpart to the action).Whether his experiment is successful is ambiguous. Does his vomiting indicate a rejection of the project, and so he hangs himself in despair (why does no one mention the very last, distant shot when he seems to be rising like a kite, higher and higher, as he swings), or is this a success, and he is simply being transported to another plane as it were? Maybe the earthy aspects of the film prevent you from bothering with this, but that doesn't mean the film does.With art films, the first image can often be very telling--maybe even the initial image that inspired the director. With Vase de Noces, we see the man's attempt to unite the human and avian, just as he later attempts to unite the human and porcine. The birds fly away, while the piglets show no such transcendence--so maybe that is why he kills them (or because death, as transformation, is fundamental to alchemy).No one talks about the birds in the film, but it is interesting to notice that the chickens are especially cruel, the turkeys are sexual and engage in what looks (or at least sounds) like a gang rape, and the ducks merely look on curiously, being neither cruel nor sexual. Maybe the man can't breed with them because they're avians (or, in the context of the film, can't fly). In any case, we are presented initial with an image of the unification of man and animal, which ends with him floating in the air like his bird-like (i.e., tethered kite), rising higher and higher.Make what you will about all of this, the movie's not just about sex with pigs and gobbling waste. If nothing else, the man may want transcendence from his condition (by extension, our condition) just as badly as you wish he'd transcend (i.e., leave) it.Lastly, I suggest if you find this movie boring, it's because you know there are scenes of pig-boinking and feces eating, and your impatience for the movie to get to that drives your sense of boredom with the rest of what is going on. That's not a good way to watch this movie. If gratuitous sensationalism is what you want to experience so you can brag to friends about how "out there" you are about movies, go watch something else.

I have nonetheless given this piece an 8, if only to raise its profile. Many have compared this to Lynch's feature-length debut Eraserhead (which Vase De Noces predates by three years). Although I see some similarities - how males deal with childbirth, the heaving black and white cinematography, the eclectic soundtrack - I am loath to compare the two myself. Whereas Eraserhead is renowned for being the archetypal "midnight movie", it is umpteen times more accessible than Vase De Noces.What drove me to watch this film? As with everyone else, curiosity. I had heard about the infamous moments in the film and thought that nobody would dare commit them to celluloid. When Wikipedia advertised it as a "lost film", a trigger flipped in my head and I had to find it. That the only copy available is a shaky nth-generation VHS lends the film the appropriate integrity for its infamy. While even the original may have been tough to sit through, the constant crackling and pitch-bending of the soundtrack makes it infinitely harder to watch, and the picture quality is so inconsistent that it can take a minute to work out what is being shown on screen (of course, once you have worked it out, you'll wish you hadn't).On to the "plot". 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. While this could be true, I personally believe that it is a timeless piece, with very little to imply the time period (when were jars invented?). 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 clips of him forcing dolls' heads on pigeons and arranging various foul substances in jars, maybe to pass the time, 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 is a thoroughly difficult film to watch and, although I have a weakness for such experiences, you will need a strong stomach and a lot of patience. In no way is this film 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.

A farmer(Dominique Garny)who may be the last man on earth,loves and makes love to a huge sow-pig.When the sow gives birth,he takes the piglets from her to keep her from eating them,and knits cute little infant things for them.When the piglets abandon him for their mother,he executes them by hanging,and the sow shows the first distress she has shown for the whole film."Wedding Trough",more commonly known as "The Pig Fu*king Movie" is certainly one of the sickest films ever made.It's loaded with scenes of implied bestiality,coprophagia and insanity,so fans of unrelentingly grim,experimental transgressions will be satisfied.The action is set on a secluded rural farm and the film is completely devoid of dialogue.Still despite its truly repellent subject matter the action is slow,but the scenes of the farmer sodomizing his swine or eating his own excrement are sick as hell.Give it a look,only if you are into extreme cinema.8 out of 10.