French director Karin Albou’s coming-of- age drama “The Wedding Song” is an in telligently written and directed story of two 16-year-old girls — one Jewish and one Muslim — and their friendship in Tunis during the Nazi occupation in the 1940s.
But the performances by neophite actresses Olympe Borval and Lizzie Brochere make the film special.
Borval is the Muslim, Nour, who is happily engaged to her cousin. Brochere’s Myriam also is to be wed, but she’s far from happy about it. Her single mom, played by the director, is marrying off her daughter to an older, wealthy doctor, who has an uncanny resemblance to Charles de Gaulle.
Albou’s feminist leanings are on full display as she depicts a society in which women exist to serve men.
One disturbing scene shows in great detail a forced and painful practice a bride must endure to make her new husband happy on their wedding night.
In another scene, the newlyweds’ families wait outside the couple’s bedroom for the groom to emerge with a blood-stained sheet as proof that he had married a virgin. As for the husband’s sexual history, who cares?
In French and Arabic with English subtitles. Running time: 100 minutes. Not rated (nudity, sex). At the Quad, 13th Street between Fifth and Sixth avenues.