Noces( A Wedding: Luxembourg : French:2016): Patriarchy Snowballed

WATCH THE TRAILER HERE: NOCES TRAILER

Patriarchy, like all other forms of oppression , continually changes and adapts itself to squeeze into a more contemporary and dynamic worldview, to slowly expand from inside and finally burst the fabric of a modern liberal society. This elaborate, snowball-ish journey of patriarchy has been traced with a multi-dimensional complexity which shoots off as a tiny embryo (quite literally), in the French film ‘Noces (A Wedding)’.

 

The opening scene of the film starts out with the protagonist, Zahira (Lina El Arabi) discussing with her gynecologist the procedure as well as the dangers of aborting her fetus. The viewers might, initially, be tempted to think of it as a piece dealing with the pro-choice/pro-‘life’ debate, but this naïve and simple assumption is soon displaced with a deeper understanding of Zahira’s life as the plot unravels.

Zahira is a Pakistani teenager living in Belgium who finds herself stuck with being pregnant after a night of un-protected sex with her Pakistani-immigrant boyfriend. Zahira lives with her deeply conservative parents (played by Indian Actor Neena Kulkarni and Babak Karimi) and two siblings. When Zahira’s family comes to know of her pregnancy, they dictate their wish to have the fetus aborted and to marry Zahira off to a ‘suitable’ Pakistani groom.

She confides into her elder brother Amir and, Amir, though supportive of her decision seems to be reluctant expressing his discomfort over the abortion.

Zahira then goes off to meet her boyfriend and asks him to talk to her parents about their wish to getting her married. But as expected, the boyfriend turns down her wish. A positive departure that we witness here from classic old bollywood films where the girl would probably have pleaded to her boyfriend, ‘to give the child his name’, Zahira takes matters into her own hands and decides to discontinue her relationship with her petulant boyfriend, rather affirmatively.

The first turning point of the film comes when Zahira is in the hospital in the middle of the pregnancy termination procedure. While the doctor is ready to operate on her, we see her getting uncomfortable and realizing that this abortion was never really her choice. She decides to stop the procedure mid way and leave the operation theatre. When she emerges out of the room, we see her brother Amir waiting in the reception area while watching something attentively on his laptop. What might have seemed as a trivial scene in a film dealing with forced marriages and sexual explorations is actually a scene with heavier consequences.

Amir is revealed to be watching a very famous Bollywood song ‘tinku jiya’ and then we see Zahira running towards her home while the same song plays in the background. While this particular scene baffled many audiences with its execution, (a cringe-worthy Bollywood song being played in a French film set in Belgium- Yes you read it right) the intent seemed to reach across quite clear. The scene intends to show how Bollywwod’s internalized misogyny is so widespread and penetrative that it snowballs into the film’s climax (many scenes later).

After this, the film deals with a lot of issues that plague the Pakistani community living in Belgium. On the one hand they are forced to physically be present in a modern and liberal atmosphere; on the other hand they can’t really seem to get rid of their traditionally regressive customs reeking of inherent patriarchy. Zahira’s parents offer her with three choices of Pakistani grooms (each choice accompanied with a creepy picture) while her mother, oblivious to the blatant irony in her statement, tells her “You should feel lucky. At least we are progressive enough to provide you choices. I was married to your father even without asking. At least we are asking you to choose from these three”. 

After various skype calls with the prospective grooms, Zahira is forced to narrow down to one and is then forcibly engaged to him (that too on Skype). The scene showing the video conversations are examples of excellent screenwriting where the writer has beautifully presented the dilemma of an orthodox family being forced, so as to say, to give up their customs one at a time. However, one custom that stands the test of time and is further manifested and facilitated through technology as we see, is patriarchy.

We also see a parallel track where Zahira’s friend expresses his love for her subtly ,in differently layered scenes, and while she is shown to like him too, she is forced to think otherwise because now she’s engaged to someone else (even if it’s through Skype). Midway through the narrative, we see Zahira walking again inside the hospital and returning to her childhood friend telling her that she has finally taken ‘her own decision’ to terminate the pregnancy.

Just before Zahira is to be flown to Pakistan to get her married to her fiancé, she runs away from her house with her French boyfriend and starts living with him. But the narrative isn’t done with the monster of patriarchy yet. Zahira’s younger sister calls her home to meet her one last time when no other family member would be present. Zahira agrees to this demand and returns to her home one last time to meet her younger sister. But, we see her brother Amir waiting instead who hugs her instantly. We believe that a ‘change of heart’ scene is possibly coming our way. But all our dreams of a ‘happy ending’ are shattered when we see Amir pulling out his revolver and killing Zahira. ra.

There, our monster of patriarchy has succeeded in staying relevant in a liberal country like Belgium. The snowball effect of subtly packaged patriarchy helps the narrative convert a seemingly trivial problem (of internalized misogyny) into a full blown monster towards the end.

All in all, ‘Noces’ is a fantastically well written tale about old school patriarchy and how it has managed to stay relevant in today’s , apparently, changing modern world. It’s a must watch for people who try to negate the presence of sexism and misogyny in supposedly liberal countries. And moreover it’s an urge for every one of us to not just look at the surface but move deeper into newer and alternative realities, because patriarchy already has.