The Bridal Shower

Directed by Sandy Wilson

Canada, 1972 (documentary / fiction, 22 minutes, colour, English)

Image: © Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre

Film Description:
"The North American, premarital fertility ritual, complete with humiliations, party games and fright masks."
-- Kay Armatage, Linda Beath (source)

Film Description:
"A painfully funny, painfully realistic enactment of one of the most bizarre social customs ever to have evolved as the 'most wonderful day' in any girl's life. Surely nobody seeing this film can ever attend a bridal shower again. Or maybe the custom will have a glorious revival based solely on its strength."
-- Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre (source)

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Notes about The Bridal Shower

Shown at the Women and Film International Festival (Toronto) in 1973.

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Quote by the Director

"We had a script, the 'actresses' read it once and put it aside. Before we started shooting they all had a chance to get behind the camera and see what were were doing with a scene. No, I wasn't trying to be cruel with this film [The Bridal Shower]. I just wanted to show up female foolishness. At a downtown screening the middle-aged female audience loved it, identified with it. I myself have been a bridesmaid three times. God, people wouldn't believe what goes on."
-- Sandy Wilson (source)

Quotes about The Bridal Shower

"In Bridal Shower, director Sandy Wilson and her crew film the proceedings of an improvised bridal shower. The detail is perfect: the bee-hive hairdos, catty conversations, boredom and giggles, the greedy onslaught on the presents and cakes, the soft-core pornography implicit in the honeymoon jokes. Question: It's real all right, but is it fair? A memorable last shot: a Barbie Doll, with naked buttocks, stuck in a gooey heap of green and yellow cake."
-- Myrna Kostash (source)

"Bridal Shower (1971) features various sisters, relatives and friends playing out a typical small-town bridal shower, revealing it for what it is, 'a North American pre-marital fertility ritual complete with humiliations, party games and fright masks'. Wilson's satire is dominated by a rambunctious sense of fun, so that we never lose touch with the women's humanity."
-- Tony Reif (source)