Wedding in White is a Canadian film from about 1972, and, despite its title, is not a walk in the park, unless your walk takes place at midnight, with muggers and perverts hiding in the bushes. The film stars Carol Kane and Donald Pleasence in a creepy, dark tale about a family, from the Maritime provinces, during World War II. The film itself is not about war, but considering the situations that these characters find themselves in, I’d have a feeling that finding oneself in a trench, and getting shot in the head by an enemy bullet, would be much more preferable.

Kane plays the fragile, naive daughter to Pleasence, an authoritative military man (sorry, not sure of the rank) whose son, a solider, returns home with his friend. Right away, we realize that these bunch of people (well, the men, anyway) aren’t high examples of respectability -- the men goof off and drink until they are drunk and stupid, while the women put up with it. These are the sort of men who will pick a fight at the Legion because their targets aren’t of the same profession. These are the sort of men who regret not being able to kill enemy POW’s.

The son’s friend has an eye on Kane, as he gives her a piece of jewelry that he got from away. The girl, clearly not the sort to get lots of attention from boys her age, is taken by this. But later on, things take an ugly turn.

At the end of one evening, Kane’s friend taunts the visitor, and his reactions to her teasing is many shades of menacing. Moments later, however, the two manage to make out for a while, but the man goes too far, and she escapes. The man is able to convince Kane’s character that “they were just kidding around” -- yet this man is in need of some sort of release now that his animal urges are on fire. He forces a kiss from Kane, and then moments later, he rapes her.

The man does not regret his actions; in fact, he continues travelling the stupid route and threatens her not to tell anyone. Very early the next morning, he drags his hung-over friend out of bed and they take off before the rest of the family wakes up. No points for guessing that Kane finds herself pregnant weeks later.

I do not want to reveal too much of what occurs after this point. The ending is clear from the film’s title, yet even that knowledge is not a complete spoiler, since what happens is actually not as obvious as you might think, although it’s still disturbing. I will say that this is probably the only movie I can think of where the prospect of a wedding is about as anticipated as having your body eaten by rats.

A sense of dread hangs over the entire picture. Even when the male characters goof off and get drunk, and say stupid things to each other, it’s hard to laugh, except in utter contempt. Men as a species get a merciless beating in this film, as there is not a single male character of any worth. Every man is either a drunk, an idiot, a leech, a pig, or all of the above. When the father finds out about her daughter’s pregnancy, he spits out his opinion that she is nothing but a slut and a dirty wh*re, before beating her. He is more worried about the shame placed upon him and his family name, and about the honor of soldiers, than the fact that his daughter was raped by human scum. Even Pleasence’s best friend, who seems, at first, to be a (relatively) better person, doesn’t get off the hook.

The women in this movie are hard to root for as well, but they are the victims, who had to put up with all this sh*t for years, and have been so psychologically (if not physically) beaten down by the men around them that they sometimes think the way that the men do. When Kane’s mother first finds out about the pregnancy, she too lashes out at her own daughter, as if it were her fault, and not the man who raped her. And then later on, we hear something chilling from the past that puts everything about relationships in this time and place into perspective.

The acting is quite a mixed bag of styles and personalities. You have a British actor (Pleasence) trying to speak Canadian, although it sounds more like a drunken Irish or Scottish way of speaking, with some of his dialogue difficult to understand. You have Carol Kane, who is amazingly effective in portraying an emotionally fragile teenager. And then you have Paul Bradley (the son) and Doug Macgrath (his friend), who were the leads in the groundbreaking Canadian film Goin’ Down the Road, basically playing darker, yet still over-the-top, versions of the characters from that film. Actually, a lot of the scenes are over-the-top, but considering that most of the characters are drunk most of the time, it’s understandable.

The direction is well-done, with a number of shots adding to the terror. Before Kane is raped, the man’s shadow looms large over her resting place. And when Kane is attacked by Pleasence, we get POV shots from Kane’s perspective. And the closing shots are quietly chilling, as we see that Kane’s character will not escape from the poison of her homelife anytime soon.

Wedding in White is an intriging example of what was made in our country during this time period. During the 1970’s and 1980’s, the Canadian government created a tax-shelter scheme, in the hopes that people would invest in Canadian films, and, specifically, Canadian films that would make money. The tax-shelter scheme was more than generous -- in fact, producers didn’t have to pay any tax. This meant that every Tom, Dick and Harry went into Canada to make a film, sponsored by the Canadian Film Development Corporation -- and this also accounted for the many Canadian films with big American (or beyond) stars, American character actors, or American has-beens, and for the amount of genre films. Films such as The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (with Richard Dreyfuss), The Changeling (George C. Scott), Meatballs (Bill Murray), and even Louis Malle’s Oscar-nominated Atlantic City (with Burt Lancaster and Susan Sarandon) are all examples of films funded by this regime. It is with some ambiguous pride that the highest grossing Canadian film of all time (and that’s even counting inflation) is the teen-sex comedy Porkys, also another product of the Canadian tax-shelter system.

The types of films made in Canada now are more art-house flick than attempts at hit movies (although Wedding in White was probably pretty art-house back in the 1970’s), and usually don’t have mid-level stars in the lead roles.

While Wedding in White is not a fun movie to watch, it is consistent in showing us an extreme form of misery and of male dominance, and it has a performance by Carol Kane that makes you feel very sorry for her character. You want her to get out of this mess, although you know that it would be very hard for a girl of her age, intellegence, and awareness to do so. That only makes her story even more painful to watch.




Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Good for a Rainy Day