Vase de Noces (1974)

A mad farmer falls in love with his pig and has mutant piglets with it. When the "piglets" prefer their mother over him, he hangs them all and the sow kills herself. Then he does the same (Imdb rating 5.5)

That's the entire movie, that's it. And it is just as screwed up as it sounds, if not moreso. I mean, the English title for Vase de Noces is.... the Pig Fucking Movie. It's something that could only be made in Europe (or Japan).

I will have to clarify a few things about Vase de Noces; it most definitely resides under the bold heading of 'arthouse'. It's shot in black and white, has zero lines of dialogue, and contains a very loose storyline. I highly doubt it was made for the express purpose of entertainment, and as such, I can't really yell at it too much.

There are many other positives I can attribute to Vase de Noces, such as the expert cinematography, shot selection and the like. The naturalistic sound effects needed to be good, and are, lots of interesting animal calls and squealching noises, whilst the soundtrack is a mix of choral, almost dystopian sounding synths and weird avent-garde keyboarding which work well with the film. The director Theirry Zeno was obviously well skilled in the art of film making. The lead and only actor wasn't bad either.

But I'm skipping around the facts; Vase de Noces is deathly boring for someone with a low attention span like myself. I'll respect it, but I sure as hell am not going to like it. And then there is the pig-loving...

It's gonna be literally squealing like a pig, as it were.

The sex scenes are grossly overstated in the title, as there is only one or maybe two scenes of man-pig love, and they are mainly thrusting from behind, so you can't see anything. And he's in love with the pig, so I guess that makes it more appropriate? It'd be less concerned with the sex, and more concerned with the live pig births, the hanging of the piglets from trees, the beheading of chickens, turkeys having sex, and the man fingering and eating his own shit. It's all fantastic stuff, really...

I can't really say much more, if you are an intellectual who stares at paintings for hours whilst stroking your beard and drinking plum-based alcoholic drinks, you'd probably enjoy this piece of cinema more then I did. I'm just a guy who reviews shitty movies.

(It's interesting to note that this film is banned in my hometown after police raided a film festival showing of it in 1975. I guess I can be expecting the same any minute.)

Things I learnt:

• Wheel n' Stick and kites are hours of amusement for mentally challenged individuals.
• Don't waste chicken heads; put them in a jar with leaves and store them in a weird menagerie.
• You can train a pig to go to the toilet the same time as you.