The concept of matrimony, of romance, of love, of lust is a pillar of pop culture. Songs, books, movies have been made around it. But what does it mean to be a bride? What does it mean to be “joined” with another? That is supposed to be the central theme of The Bride. Or so it appears.
The fragmentary nature of the project prevents anything definitive by way of meaning—but we do understand what is happening, on some level. That smidgen of understanding doesn’t mean that the viewer doesn’t hope for some sort of elucidating coda that would connect the disparate images and sequences onscreen. Well, that never really comes up; instead, directors Tiziano Doria and Samira Guadagnuolo place the burden of elucidation on the viewer.
What then passes for a thread that (barely) ties things together comes by way of several voiceovers. These voiceovers are themselves chopped up and consist of both prosaic statements and poetic ruminations across the runtime. Less emphasis is given to meaning than to presentation. This, of course, limits whatever commercial appeal this documentary might have had, but it does mean that it could find a place on the festival circuit, particularly within Europe.
A sorta pastoral poetry opens the film. A goat is said to be translucent, and onscreen a goat appears, as opaque as the one next door as it nibbles on grass. The bucolic theme continues with a woman pruning leaves from a tree. If this establishes an important setting for the project that unfurls, the subsequent words, a recollection, announce what appears to be the film’s main theme. “I was standing there,” she says. “[He] comes close to me and pam, he slaps me.” She was wearing her wedding gown. For the moment, nothing else is said about this act of violence. Instead, we see an old photo of a lady in a wedding gown. Later, we learn she was slapped so hard that she lost her ear (or perhaps her hearing). There is another sequence involving a pair of young girls living in a non-agrarian environment. Governing this section, as one might imagine, is some boy-centric discussion.
In terms of narrative, there is almost nothing explicitly joining the scenes, save for the centrality of femaleness. There isn’t a man’s voice to be heard except the one singing, in a rather wistful turn of irony, a love song. The irony is deepened when the voiceover that gives the film a semi-solid centre explains that you could never say no a man when he wanted it. You just laid there and there was never any question of love. “What a life we had,” she adds, “of slavery.” There is a short laugh. Is it of acceptance or of the absurdity of her particular romance? We never find out.
Doria and Guadagnuolo, who clearly are photographers, have made a mosaic of womanhood, but what it adds up to is hardly apparent. It’s certainly why it received its international premiere at the Film Forward section of the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival, where it won the section’s top honour. Filmed in 16mm, its picture has an unvarnished quality—as though it seeks to emulate the old photographs within its own scenes. More narrative (and maybe even moral) value could have been gotten, if the directors had stayed within the more conventional dimensions of documentaries—but one must admit that the film would lose much of its mystifying aura.
Direction, screenplay, cinematography, editing: Samira Guadagnuolo, Tiziano Doria
Producer: Samira Guadagnuolo
Sound: Paolo Romano, Cesare Lopopolo
Production Company: Warshad Film (Italy)
Venue: Thessaloniki Documentary Film Festival (Film Forward)
Duration: 49 minutes
