An assortment of eccentric characters converge and collide as thousands
of dead pigs float down the river towards a rapidly-modernizing
Shanghai.
Review by
Musanna Ahmed
Directed by: Cathy Yan
Starring: Vivian Wu, Haoyu Yang, Mason Lee, Meng Li, David Rysdahl
Hollywood’s indie-to-IP pipeline is in full force these days, the avenue
in which studios recruit an impressive indie director to make the next
entry in an existing franchise - examples include Jon Watts going from
Cop Car to
Spider-Man
and Colin Trevorrow’s transition from $750,000 drama
Safety Not Guaranteed to
Jurassic World, which cost $150m. Online discussions often revolve around judging which
Marvel, DC or Star Wars character each filmmaker could be
assigned to but the insistence on casting these filmmakers at the helm of
a blockbuster can result in missing out on interesting, original material
as promised by their previous work.
Personally, this writer has no problem with filmmakers getting paid well
and, though there are plenty of examples of cool voices being relegated to
directors-for-hire, we can also sometimes get something with real passion
behind it. E.g. Ryan Coogler had pitched
Creed
to Sylvester Stallone before he even began production on
Fruitvale Station, and Kevin Feige claims Chloe Zhao's pitch for Marvel’s
The Eternals is the best he's ever heard, which inspires
optimism for the forthcoming feature.
Last year's
Birds of Prey, a picture with far more zest and creativity than anything else in DC's
cinematic universe, was gifted to us by Cathy Yan, who was
following up from her indie film Dead Pigs, a compelling Chinese drama that’s only now being distributed outside of
China, thanks to MUBI, following the critical and commercial success of
her
Suicide Squad
spin-off.
For those who saw or will see Dead Pigs prior to
Birds of Prey and want to play matchmaker between Yan and
established IP, there are clear reasons for why she was a good hire for
the Harley Quinn feature. Number one, she's excellent at managing an
ensemble cast and dedicating ample time to connect us with each of her
characters. Secondly, her ability to pull off postmodern, absurdist
humour. Then there's her strong visual sense, marked by a vivid use of
colour. For those who subscribe to the auteur theory, Yan certainly has
signature elements that characterise both of her films, and
Dead Pigs is particularly fascinating in how she merges her
rich imagination with real life.
The film is inspired by a real event in 2013 in which a total of over
16,000 dead pigs were found floating in the Huangpu River in Shanghai. The
bizarre incident has been interpreted by the filmmaker as a metaphor of
financial progress. Employing the sort of panoramic ensemble storytelling
that would make Robert Altman proud, this drama focuses on a handful of
disparate characters whose lives are defined by their various economic
circumstances, driving them in various directions that intertwine in
unique ways.
Though she’s arguably the most essential component of the narrative, the
best performance and best character is Vivian Wu’s Candy Wang, a
small business owner who is stuck between her disinterest in selling her
family home for a high price and her brother begging her to sell the place
so he can be saved from his dire circumstances. He, Old Wang (Haoyu Yang), is a pig farmer who rambles his way around the city to try and hustle
money in order to pay off debts to some gangsters. He is also the owner of
many dead pigs. The complicated dynamic between the siblings is one marked
by repeated frustration, and the climax to their episode is a masterclass
in tragicomedy, serving an image that you won’t forget.
Old Wang’s infamy is covered up by his son Wang Zheng (Mason Lee),
a waiter who tells people his father is far more successful than he
actually is and is subject to many requests for money from his old man.
One audience member of Wang Zheng’s lies is Xia Xia (Meng Li), a
generational wealth product who has probably never had to take a political
position in her life. Her ambition is to join her favourite popstar’s team
of dancers but for now she’s living in the moment, spending time with this
affable waiter in the glistening, neon-tinted Shanghai nights.
In between them all is a young American architect, Sean (David Rysdahl), whose local failures have brought him abroad to China. It’s easy to
see why his ideas weren’t received so well at home - his plan for a new
housing complex in Shanghai is a peculiar imitation of Barcelona’s La
Sagrada Familia. Nevertheless, he has everyone on board except the most
important person - Candy, whose house would need to be acquired by the
property developer in order to make space for the new cathedral-like
building. Money is at the heart of everything during this period of rapid
modernisation but it’s the personal values - family, community, honesty,
ambition, stability - that ultimately may be what the characters need to
save themselves.
While Birds of Prey was scribed by Christina Hodson,
Dead Pigs is both directed and written by Yan and showcases
her excellence at both crafts. She effortlessly trades between character
study and plot-driven events while maintaining a cultural specificity to
the people and themes she explores, shepherding uniformly excellent
performances from her cast that establish the tone of her dramedy.
Cinematographer Federico Cesca has experience in shooting films
around the world, from the American
Patti Cake$
to the Egyptian Yomeddine, and one assumes he spent ample time embedded in Shanghai to be able to
capture the city’s beauty and complexity as well as he does, communicating
to us the exact extent of which the city is a financial centre of the
world and cannily filming in dense locations. It’s a testament to Yan’s
tastes that she’s able to work so effectively with her DoPs to make her
films visually pop in the way they do. The weighty two-plus hour runtime
of the film can be felt at times but Dead Pigs is largely a
treat for the eyes, intellect and emotion.
Dead Pigs is on MUBI from February
12th.
