Trying to keep up with Wenn ein Mädel Hochzeit macht

Should you watch Wenn ein Mädel Hochzeit macht today? If you like quiet, thoughtful cinema, absolutely not. You will probably hate this if you get annoyed by characters who simply refuse to talk to each other to solve a basic problem. But if you have a soft spot for dusty, 1930s slapstick and weirdly specific German humor, you might find something here.

The movie is basically a giant game of musical chairs. People pop into frames, say something loud and confusing, and then vanish before the other person can process it. It feels less like a narrative and more like a series of sketches filmed in the same three rooms. 👰

Lucie Englisch is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. She has this way of looking at the camera—or just past it—that suggests she knows the script is a bit of a mess. It’s a performance that feels very tired, in a funny way. I kept wondering if she just wanted to go home.

There is a scene near the middle involving a misplaced letter that goes on for, I swear, an eternity. It made me think of the pacing in The Ballyhoo Buster, where things just sort of keep spinning until the director decides to call it a day. The silence between the jokes is sometimes louder than the jokes themselves.

The sets look like they were built out of cardboard and optimism. At one point, a door nearly falls off its hinges when someone slams it, and the camera just keeps rolling. It’s these little, imperfect glitches that make me like the movie more than I probably should.

I’m not sure the plot even needs to exist. It’s just an excuse to have people run in circles. It lacks the sharp, biting edge you might find in something like The Human Tornado, but it has a weird, frantic energy that is hard to shake.

• The lighting is mostly just "bright."
• The dialogue moves at the speed of a caffeinated squirrel.
• Nobody explains anything, ever.
• The outfits are surprisingly distracting.

It isn't a masterpiece. It isn't even really a good movie by modern standards. But there is something strangely honest about how messy it is. It doesn't pretend to be more than a loud, silly wedding farce. Sometimes, that is enough. Or maybe I just needed a distraction today. Either way, it's a weird little artifact.