Vase de noces (Thierry Zéno, 1974)
Wedding Trough
,

A man is in love with a sow. She gives birth to piglets. He hangs them. Out of despair the mother commits suicide. There follows an analysis of decomposition, the devouring of shit and the man’s death, his body flying through the sky.

Vase de noces (Thierry Zéno, 1974)
Language
Taal
Langue
Without dialogue
Only available in
Enkel beschikbaar in
Disponible uniquement en
Belgium, Luxembourg, Netherlands
Duration
Duur
Durée
82'
Aspect Ratio
Beeldverhouding
Format d'image
1.66

Warning: this film contains explicit images

A man is in love with a sow. She gives birth to piglets. He hangs them. Out of despair the mother commits suicide. There follows an analysis of decomposition, the devouring of shit and the man’s death, his body flying through the sky.
Upon its release in 1974 this film caused a scandal – the transgressive accumulation of zoophilia, “infanticide”, death and coprophaghia triggered battles as impassioned as those provoked by L’âge d’or, which would have delighted Luis Buñuel, who believed that cinema in its usual form exploited only a fragment of the deflagratory resources at its disposal to protest and to dream. Wedding Trough can be classed among those most powerful artworks which imprint unforgettable images and wounds on the memory of the spectator. Pure challenging images, mystical, alchemical and psychoanalytical propositions addressed at an obliterated level of consciousness.
The film is a poem without words which both details a passage through the four elements and above all lays bare the primary impulses which bind man to the world and the animals, the latter shown in the equality of otherness. It is not a matter of anthropomorphism, rather of scrutinizing the conditions of desire, “bestiality”, suffering and aggression. As for the human side – represented by Dominique Garny, a mediating figure and an inspired actor who extricates himself from all explanatory psychology or sociology – it plunges us into a regressive and hallucinatory universe cleansed of all contact with reality in the name of a single inner goal, the exploration of the primal abyss. (Jacquelin Aubenas)

“My character has no specific psychology, nor even less pathology. He is a man of flesh, outside of any precise cultural context, outside of time, he is a ghost who inhabits the screen for an hour. I leave the spectator a total freedom of interpretation: I wanted to put in the film such a multiplicity of signs that one can find matter for teaching or fascination.”

Thierry Zeno

Language
Taal
Langue
Without dialogue
Only available in
Enkel beschikbaar in
Disponible uniquement en
Belgium, Luxembourg, Netherlands
Duration
Duur
Durée
82'
Aspect Ratio
Beeldverhouding
Format d'image
1.66
A Film by
Een film van
Un film de
With
Met
Avec
Dominique Garny
Script
Scenario
Scénario
Dominique Garny, Thierry Zéno
Image
Beeld
Image
Thierry Zéno
Sound
Geluid
Son
Roger Cambier
Producer
Producent
Producteur
Thierry Zéno
Editing
Montage
Montage
Thierry Zéno
Music
Muziek
Musique
Perotinus, Claudio Monteverdi, Alain Pierre
Production
Productie
Production
Zéno Films