Hard to understand outside the culture
I'm grateful for the IMDB, where I can come to read threads that help me to understand a film. This is one, in particular, I found quite difficult.
I'm an American, and I really wanted to understand the culture represented here better. But it was so confusing to me, having grown up with more freedom. Zaza is said to be 31, but he doesn't date anyone outside of those his parents choose for him. That's quite odd to me. Is that really the way it works? Also, I was quite angry at the family for barging in on his date with Judith. And Zaza's mother calling Judith a whore - right in front of her daughter! It was just unthinkable to me! The way the family came in and all the women began snooping around the apartment, it was quite shocking. Why didn't Judith ask them to leave? Zaza's mother, at one point, mentions that Zaza has filled Judith's refrigerator with food using his father's credit card. Are we, the audience, meant to take that as fact? Does Judith have a job? Didn't she purchase anything in her refrigerator? If that's true, as an outsider, I needed that explained to me in some way, because my feeling was that the family was exceedingly rude to her. I would have much preferred seeing Zaza's father go in to speak to Judith and Zaza alone, not this whole family bursting in.
After that scene, it was hard for me to see how Zaza would ever be able to forgive his family for their intrusion. I know I wouldn't. But his mother says some tender words to him in his apartment a little later and all is forgotten. Quite odd, I thought. Later, at the wedding, Zaza brings his mother up on stage to say she's more beautiful than his new wife. I'm guessing this is customary within the culture? After what his mother had done to intrude on his privacy, I truly don't even see how she could have been invited to the wedding, let alone exulted in front of the guests. But then, he did appear to be drunk (that business in the bathroom with his father - what son looks at his father while he urinates and compliments his, um, equipment?!, the fact that his friends are trying to pull him off the stage during his speech, the way he grabs his new wife's breasts in front of everyone), so I imagine he was probably being sarcastic, in which case, I couldn't understand why his mother (as the domineering woman she had shown herself to be throughout the film) wouldn't force him from the platform. Very confusing, the entire last scene, I thought.
Also confusing for me was the way the mother apologized later to Judith. I couldn't understand her motivation for doing so. She seemed to have such contempt for this woman. She called her a whore, for goodness sake! In front of her young daughter! Judith was quite strong to be able to forgive this woman, I thought. Then the woman goes back out to the car and calls her husband a coward because he didn't go in to speak with Judith. Very controlling and domineering, again. But then, in the first scene she's shown actually bathing him, as though he wasn't able to wash himself.
So what I'm saying is that I found the situations in the film very different from the way life around me works, and therefore needed more of a guide from the filmmaker that this is another world, another reality. I needed to be brought into the reality somehow so that I could understand it from their point of view. I think, largely, that's why the film didn't work for me. There are many foreign films I've loved over the years, and I think it's because I was allowed a window into that world - a way of understanding a culture that was different from my own. In this film, I felt I didn't have that understanding.