Le mariage de Mlle Beulemans: Old School Charm or Just Dusty?

Is this worth the watch?

If you have a weird soft spot for early talkies and don't mind the pacing of a slow-moving parade, you might actually get a kick out of Le mariage de Mlle Beulemans. If you need snappy dialogue or, you know, things happening faster than a snail’s crawl, skip it. It’s for the history nerds and people who like their cinema with a side of heavy regional accents.

The whole thing centers on Mlle Beulemans and her very specific dating dilemma. Her dad runs a restaurant in Brussels, and he’s clearly expecting her to settle down with a local lad. Instead, she picks a guy from Paris. The horror, right?

It feels a bit like watching a theater production that forgot to take the stage down. The acting is loud, very stagey—lots of big gestures and faces that look like they’re trying to reach the back row of a balcony. Sometimes it works, sometimes it just feels like everyone is shouting at the camera lens. 🙄

There's this one scene where the father is just losing his mind about the Parisian suitor. He holds onto a chair for way too long. It’s almost like he’s waiting for a cue that never came. You can really tell the director was just letting the cameras roll.

The Vibe

It doesn't have the same punch as something like Sally, but it’s got its own weird personality. It reminded me a bit of the domestic squabbles in What Every Woman Wants, though the tone here is much more 'local pride' than social commentary. It’s basically just a bunch of people arguing in rooms about who gets to marry who. That’s it. That’s the movie.

• The sets look like they’re made of painted cardboard. I love it.
• The accents are thick enough to cut with a butter knife.
• There’s a weird amount of time spent just watching people walk into a room and sit down.

Honestly, the movie gets way more interesting once it stops trying to be a serious romantic drama and just leans into the silliness of the regional bickering. When they stop being 'polite' and start being 'Brussels,' it actually has a pulse. Don't expect some deep dive into the human condition. It’s just a snapshot of a time when this kind of light comedy was the peak of entertainment. Watch it for the costumes, maybe, or just to see how much we’ve stopped caring about where someone’s hometown is when they start dating.

It’s not perfect. It’s barely even 'good' by modern standards. But it feels *real* in a way that modern polished stuff rarely does. It’s a bit dusty, sure, but the heart is still there, somewhere under all that old celluloid.