Wedding Night

A young couple, Catherine and Christian, get married. They have one thing in common - heroin. The bride's father is a tyrant who runs an industrial empire and his daughter is his everything. To the greedy mother of the bridegroom, her son's marriage is a way of getting rich. She gets her son to help her forge a life insurance in
the name of the bride. After the wedding the bride leaves the couple's apartment to get drugs and does not come back.

Comment:
Wedding Night is like a nightmare, a nightmare no one wakes up from. Nobody switches on the light and brings hot chocolate and rolls. What comes instead, comes intravenously, as temporary pain relief from life itself. Or as euthanasia in order to reach the final release. Who is to blame for the suffering, the non-life? The drug that holds the bride and bridegroom in a firm grip? The bridegroom out to get his bride's life annuity? The mother of the bridegroom who drives her son into signing the deathsentence? The director, Pol Cruchten, doesn't give any answers.
Objectively speaking the characters lack nothing. The bride Catherine has beauty, power and wealth. The wedding is a social
erection, staged by her father, the famous industrial tycoon. The bridegroom, Christian, really doesn't belong in Catherine's world. But through this marriage he becomes a male Cinderella, The American Dream personified. The world isn't as beautiful as it seems though. In the background is Christian's mother acting the part of the evil fairy, in part working together with her son. Assisted by the underworld, she offers Catherine forbidden fruit.
Wedding Night leaves no way out but death. Is the world really this terrible? Or does this specifically apply to the upper middle class the director is portraying? In that case, neither the drugs, the bridal couple, nor anyone else is to blame. It is rather the society, in which the highest goal to strive for is the acquisition of status, that is guilty.
The horror scenario takes form with almost overly explicit symbolism. A cold metal blind shuts the sunlight out. A wall becomes grotesque in an extreme close-up. A pillared hall brings to mind the Third Reich. The last scene is an image of the waiting room of death, something in between a backyard and a dump. Then what happens? Wedding Night is a film to commit suicide to.
Maria Österberg Ben Saad

Orig. titel
Hochzäitsnuecht: Medverkande
Thierry van Werveke, Myriam Müller: Producent
Jeannot Theis: Manus
Pol Cruchten: Foto
Daniel Barrau: Musik
Andre Mergenthaler: Talat språk
Luxembourgish