Dead Pigs Review

The latest game news from IGN - one of my fave channels ever - check it out Dead Pigs debuts on MUBI on February 12. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Two years after its release in China and three years after its Sundance premiere, Cathy Yan’s Dead Pigs will finally be available to stream via arthouse platform MUBI. The Chinese-American co-production was Yan’s feature debut, and it landed her the job of helming Warner Bros’ superhero movie Birds of Prey. On the surface, the two films share several similarities: they’re fixated with lonely characters navigating forces larger than themselves, they each spring to life through vivid costumes and colorful set design, and both films feature sizable ensembles, who Yan captures with a certain freneticism. However, they could not feel more different once their credits have rolled. Where Birds of Prey moves at a mile-a-minute — at times, far too quickly — Dead Pigs is far more languid but remains laser-focused on the way its characters interact with the spaces around them. Where Harley Quinn and DC’s anti-heroines were swept up in unyielding plot momentum, Yan’s kinetic approach in Dead Pigs is contained, and far-more character-focused. Momentum seldom carries over between scenes, because the film isn’t tracking a linear or singular plot. Instead, its energy resets and builds anew each time it cuts between one of its five main characters; your mileage may vary, but this slow-burn effect turns each sequence into a story of its own, complete with lingering moments that allow each actor to breathe life into their characters’ physical and emotional being. The story, which moves between metropolitan Shanghai and the nearby Jiaxing province, follows Candy (Vivian Wu), an eccentric middle-aged beautician hoping to save her family home from predatory builders, “Old Wang” (Haoyu Yang), a bumbling, indebted pig farmer who suffers a series of sudden tragedies, Sean (David Rysdahl), a white American architect adrift in an unfamiliar city, Xia Xia (Meng Li), an aloof, directionless rich girl involved in a drunken hit-and-run, and Zhen (Mason Lee), a down-on-his-luck waiter at an upscale restaurant, who finds himself in possession of Xia Xia’s phone. If none of these characters except Zhen and Xia Xia seem at all connected, that’s part of the point. The film isn’t upfront about the ways their stories overlap, though it doesn’t treat their connections as plot twists either. Instead, it gradually brings its characters into each other’s orbits as a matter of financial happenstance. Rather than revealing or even hinting at these connections, it spends its initial half-hour introducing its ensemble through a series of idiosyncratic vignettes, allowing each performance to dictate the tone of a given scene (Vivian Wu and Hoayu Yang are particularly delightful, balancing unapologetic quirks with unyielding stubbornness and resolve). [ignvideo width=610 height=374 url=https://ift.tt/3jHTRa0] The film’s title, and one of its central subplots, takes its cue from a real-life 2013 news story in which thousands of pigs were disposed of in the Huangpu river after their mysterious deaths. Yan, while raised and educated between the U.S. and Hong Kong, was born near Shanghai and felt compelled to narrativize the incident. However, the film isn’t so much about this ghastly tragedy as it is about the wider circumstances that led to it. The pigs’ rotting flesh might poison the water, but there’s a quieter, more invisible, toxin infecting China’s social fabric. What connects Candy, Old Wang, Sean, Xia Xia, and Zhen — even more than coincidences or family histories — is the way they’re isolated by the increasing industrialization and Westernization of China’s economic landscape (the film would make a fitting double feature with Jia Zhangke’s 2018 gangland saga Ash is Purest White). The livestock tragedy no doubt affects Old Wang, an impoverished farmer, but his desperation isn’t caused by this mysterious illness. It’s merely exacerbated by it since Wang is already the victim of a tech scam stemming from a novel VR craze. Similarly, the other characters find themselves caught up in someone else’s relentless rat race, whether salon-owner Candy, whose home is the last one standing in the way of a new real estate development, or city-dweller Zhen, who puts on a wealthy front for his poor family in Jiaxing, or Sean, who’s conscripted by fellow expat and modeling agent Angie (Zazie Beetz) to pose as an American VIP to help broker a series of business deals (the film deftly captures the reverence and exotic fascination with which whiteness is viewed in many parts of Asia). Whether the characters are trying to maintain appearances, livelihoods, or simple connections to their families and cultures, someone else’s scramble for financial gain proves their biggest hurdle. Even Xia Xia, the film’s only wealthy exception, is susceptible to the isolating effects of class. The rich people she’s expected to fall in with are positively repulsive, so her blossoming friendship with Zhen is a refreshing change. But she’s hardly a stranger to the way wealth shields, and the way it sweeps problems under the rug; fittingly, her father bails her out of a particularly big one while she’s still asleep. The dissonance between her actions and their consequences, or lack thereof, becomes something of a spiritual test — a demon she can’t quiet. Yan and cinematographer Federico Cesca make a formidable creative pair. Seldom are the moments when the frame isn’t in motion — each environment feels fluid and unpredictable — but each camera movement is precise, purposefully capturing the way the characters shift between various levels of restraint, as they’re pulled and pushed and contorted by the plot, and by developments outside their control. The film’s visual fabric feels downright oppressive at times, with the harsh neons and halogens of Shanghai’s nightlife cornering the characters and illuminating their most private moments. The film’s score, however, runs counter to this visual motif, with Andrew Orkin bringing a light touch to the compositions as if to tap into some angelic guiding force within the characters, pushing back against the outside world. This culminates in a musical moment evocative of another great ensemble piece, Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia, a similar tapestry of overlapping stories — and a comparison of which Yan’s film is undoubtedly worthy. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=2021-movies-preview&captions=true"]

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