Wedding in White

It's WWII in a small working class Canadian town. Jeannie Dougall (Carol Kane) is a good girl living at home with her parents (Donald Pleasence, Doris Petrie). Her brother Jimmie comes home on furlough with military buddy Billy (Doug McGrath). After a night of drinking, Jeannie's friend rejects Billy who ends up raping her instead. Jeannie gets pregnant. Her father refuses to believe a soldier would act dishonorably. He forces her to marry his elderly drunken war buddy Sandy to maintain his honor.

This is a small Canadian indie. It's pretty good. The accent is a little tough. The production is definitely older. It's grimy and old working class. The acting from Pleasence and Petrie is terrific. Carol Kane is sadly naive and in need of a big hug. It does need more in terms of intensity. I wonder if the movie needs a scene where Jeannie begs Billy to accept his part in the pregnancy. This movie needs something to elevate the drama.

Writer-director William Fruet, adapting his play about a 16-year-old Irish wallflower in a Canadian town during World War II who is raped in her own living room by the soldier pal of her visiting brother, has a very limited vocabulary and an even narrower imagination. The wartime period décor is drably evoked, while the characters are of a frustratingly limited intelligence. Fruet has his cast emote and emote until the actors are shiny-faced with sweat. Worst of the offenders is Paul Bradley as the Dougall family's son celebrating being home on leave (Bradley, acting drunk with his mouth hanging open, looks almost as old as Donald Pleasence playing his father). As the wallflower's would-be loose, self-centered girlfriend, screechy Bonnie Carol Case is nearly as bad (and no explanation has been provided as to how these polar-opposites ever became friends, or why Case is so eager to meet soldiers but barely notices the two army men in her own friend's dining room). In the lead, young Carol Kane has been directed by Fruet to stay doe-eyed and vulnerable--with a humiliated look on her face. Still three years away from her breakthrough role in "Hester Street", Kane exudes promise but can't do much to bring shading or subtlety to this overstated scenario. * from ****

Young Carol Kane set the pattern for her screen persona as a kindly but dim bulb teen in this dark kitchen sink drama, set in small town Ontario during World War II. Her older brother home on leave brings with him a worthless army buddy, who forces himself upon her after a night of drunken carousing. Left pregnant she faces the wrath of her imbecilic father (Donald Pleasence, an astonishing performance), who cooks up a monstrous scheme to "save the family honor" which culminates in one of the most grotesque finales ever put to film. Bleak and utterly harrowing, this is the scratchy flip side to all those cloying "nostalgia" flicks of its era and a fierce condemnation of the patriarchal social system out of control. For all its seriousness of purpose, though, it's also very funny, rude Canadian humor permeating even its worst situations as the appalling characters show all their warts with jolly gusto. Though unflinchingly realistic (period detail and speech patterns free of anachronisms) it's structured like a horror film (later director Fruet's specialty, unsurprisingly) and the final moment plays like the punch line of an especially tasteless joke. Not for all tastes, but recommended to those who caught the mordant hilarity of the equally poignant but merciless WELCOME TO THE DOLL'S HOUSE.

At first I thought that this was another dumb Canadian film financed by my tax money. Then it occurred to me that there was quite a bit in this film that was realistic and hard hitting. Anyone born after the 1960's won't appreciate that the negative attitude of everyone to a girl getting pregnant out of wedlock portrayed in this movie was the norm in Canada during the war and into the 50's. Nobody's being hypocritical. That's the way it was.

The old men and misfits who were pressed into Canada's "Zombie Army" to guard prisoners is also authentic.

The movie is quite authentic in its portrayal of a crummy town in the Maritimes. No, it's not Ontario. The accents are all Maritime except for Ms. Kane and Ms. Case, who are too American to fit the scenery. That's not to disparage their acting which is perfect for the characters they portray. Donald Pleasance does not exaggerate his accent. That's how people talk "down east".

Where the movie goes astray is in the economy of the wartime years. There is reference to food shortages but there seems to be no shortage of Scotch and beer. Also, the store that Jeannie robs looks exactly like a Woolworth's store of the era except that the shelves are brimming with things to sell. That was not the case. Finally, Sandy doesn't seem to have any problem getting tires (unobtainable) and gasoline (rationed) during the war years.

Give this movie more than 10 minutes of attention if it comes on late night TV in your area.

I just finished seeing Wedding in White and I have to say that the experience was somewhat akin to seeing Herzog's 'Even Dwarfs Started Small' or Duk's 'Address Unknown' for the first time. Here's the synopsis:

During World War 2 in small town Ontario, Canada, a mousey sixteen year old girl gets raped at her house by a friend of a friend. When her Catholic mother finds out that her daughter is carrying a child from the attack she accuses her daughter of bringing it on herself. Now for those of you who don't know, in Canada they were incarcerating young girls for promiscuity as late as the sixties, so being the forties, the mother pleads with her husband not to send their young girl away. Let's just say that the alternative they come up is worse than you could ever imagine.

For those who can tolerate this kind of difficult subject matter, I highly recommend this film. Talk about Subconscious Cruelty!