User Reviews

Although prolific French screenwriter Jean-Claude Carriere had appeared in bit parts from the outset of his film career – from Pierre Etaix's HAPPY ANNIVERSARY (1962; which he also co-directed with the star comedian) to Luis Bunuel's DIARY OF A CHAMBERMAID (1964; portraying a country priest in the first of his 6 celebrated collaborations with the Spanish surrealist master) and THE MILKY WAY (1969; as a heretical bishop!) – and, according to the IMDb, he went on to make 32 film appearances in all, the latest in Abbas Kiorastami's CERTIFIED COPY (2010) – it is still unusual to find him carrying a film on his shoulders as an actor, albeit sharing the burden with iconic Danish actress Anna Karina; this is the main reason I decided to watch THE WEDDING RING on the occasion of Carriere's 80th birthday and, as it happened, his co-star here turned 71 herself within days! The film in question – originally entitled L'ALLIANCE which is a much better name than the bland and misleading one accorded it for screenings in English-speaking territories – was also the first (and so far only) one to be sourced from a novel he had penned himself and this may be one of the reasons for this artistic change of pace; even stranger is the fact that a virtual unknown director was trusted with helming the offbeat enterprise that some have read into it a modern-day updating of the "Garden of Eden" parable – with the equally intriguing MALEVIL (1981) and DOCTOR PETIOT (1990) being the only other entries of note in his trim filmography. Having said that, Carriere is perfectly cast in the lead of the virginal veterinarian who seeks the services of a marriage agency to find himself a wife whose chief prerequisite, apparently, is that she own a large house in Paris with a closet room included!

Meeting Karina during an on-site visit to the qualified house she inhabits on her own, he overhears the latter speaking on the phone to the chief of the marriage agency about him; they still get married and, once installed on the premises, he is soon obsessed with finding out what lies inside the locked closet (a query which she had earlier dismissed). When he does eventually force it open – during one of his wife's curious shopping sprees that never see her bringing anything back home with her – he finds several manly accessories (fishing rods, bedside slippers, etc.) which indicate the presence of a man who had lived there before him. To makes matters worse, he starts noticing that his supply of ether (which he uses while performing surgery on his animal patients) is steadily decreasing and begins to suspect that Karina makes use of drugs during her absences but is unable to acquire factual evidence when he follows her around town. As if Carriere's exotic clientele – from hamsters to chamaleons to parrots – is not off-putting enough (especially to the fearful maid), the vet starts receiving potentially dangerous animals in the mail – from insects (I wonder if Bunuel's lifelong fascination with them had rubbed off on his fixture of a collaborator by then!) to monkeys to a snake! When the latter goes missing after Karina gets a little too curious of finding out what is inside a wooden box that has lain unopened for days in her husband's study – initiating a panic-stricken search inside the house by the civil authorities – Carriere virtually accuses her of wanting to poison him. Actually, it was a vengeful act on the wife's part after listening to the husband's dissection of their marriage laid down on tape. This incident creates an irreparable rift in their alliance – which, rather than copulation as an end to procreation (sexual gratification can be excluded outright in this company) had previously culminated in her assisting him in animal operations.

The eventual coda is as unexpected and bizarre as it is satisfying and thought-provoking: for days, Carriere had locked himself in his study minutely documenting the behavior of the animals which had gradually been growing more frantic. At the very point where the animals' agitation and the consequent interconnection between the couple are at its highest levels, the end of the world comes to pass; there are no spectacular sequences of mass destruction or panicking people to be found here and the viewer should not expect it because the film does not need them either. The very next – and final – image of the film is of the tape recorder in the middle of a now-barren landscape from where still emanates (but only for a short while before it gets distorted) Carriere's voice speaking about Karina. Unfortunately, the English subtitles available on the copy I watched are occasionally ungrammatical, as if the film's dialogue had been translated by someone to whom English is not his mother tongue...but that can hardly dampen the quirky if low-key brilliance of this unjustly forgotten, little gem.

This very fine movie has a sad ending.

The previous posts asked what the tape record was. Basically it is "I never told her that I loved her"

But there is a technical goof in that final shot. This is a cassette recorder, buried in sand, and looping while failing on this sentence.

It is possible with a vinyl record, but NOT on a normal cassette player, even if it is badly damaged, the tape cannot loop.

Beside this, the story builds up from the beginning in a funny and mysterious way. The hunt for a wife with a 'Large apartment' and a closet is doted with humorous comments, and the various patients are more bizarre as the script goes on.

Taking a look at a DVD sellers page,I spotted a strange-sounding title starring Anna Karina.Since I've only read about the work she did during the French New Wave era,I decided that it was the perfect time to give Karina the ring.

The plot:

Leaving the countryside for Paris, veterinarian Hugues starts to think about finding a woman to get married to,who will helpfully own a big enough house for him to run his own private practice (aww..how romantic!) Meeting via dating agency,Hugues soon gets married to Jeanne and moves into her house.Finding Hugues to spend more time with the animals than with her,Jeanne starts to play games on her husband,which leads to Hugues sinking deeper into his small world,and being suspicious that Jeanne will soon fly away with the birds.

View on the film:

Playing a major part behind the scenes by co-writing the screenplay and writing the novel it is based on, Jean-Claude Carrière gives a creepy performance as vet Hugues. Looking stuffy in his woollen jumper and mangled beard, Carrière chips away at Hugues work with animals to reveal an obsession with no room for compromise that is verging on madness. Radiating beauty, Anna Karina shows a great care in vividly displaying each of Jeanne,whose initial delight in "pushing" Hugues Karina hits with a real relish that gradually crumbles into an eerie sense of doubt which Karina tangles Jeanne in,as Hugues starts to react to Jeanne's games in a dangerously unpredictable manner.

Bringing Carrière's own novel to the vets,the screenplay by co- writer/director Christian de Chalonge and star Carrière entwines a peculiar,unique atmosphere. Bringing a touch of mystery to the film with a fragmented exposure of the disease seeping to the core of Hughes and Jeanne "difficult" relationship,the writers give the title a strikingly odd Sci-Fi mood,as Hugues mumbled cassette recordings and his nihilistic-slanted outlook on the future of the human race being the pure dreams of a mad scientist.

Burning the midnight oil at Hugues vet surgery,director Christian de Chalonge & cinematographer Alain Derobe brilliantly make the skin crawl with grime covered walls and a thick musk tapping into the eerie Sci-Fi atmosphere of everything being slightly off-centre. Scrubbing dirt on the screen,Chalonge takes a wonderfully sudden turn into poetically haunting Sci-Fi,as the wedding bells ring out for all time.