Before she made Birds of Prey, director Cathy Yan cut her teeth on a film with more personal ties to her. Originally released in 2018, Dead Pigs has finally seen much wider digital releases around the world this year. The film is inspired by an event near Shanghai in 2013 where 16,000 dead pigs were tossed into one of the rivers that contribute to the city’s drinking water supply. Dead Pigs has an ensemble cast and features a narrative that is more a web of interweaving character stories that crisscross with each other at various points.
At the heart of this is the Wang family, who comprise three of the film’s main characters. Old Wang is a down on his luck pig farmer that finds himself in a financial bind as he loses his entire stock of pigs just as he also finds himself swindled in a get-rich-quick scheme, leaving him with no way to repay his massive debts. Wang Zhen is Old Wang’s son who lives in Shanghai but has struggles of his own trying to make ends meet working in a restaurant. Candy Wang is Old Wang’s sister who runs a successful beauty salon but also lives in the Wang family’s long-standing familial home, which is in danger of being torn down as part of the development of a European-themed housing district.
Rounding out the main cast are Xia Xia and Sean Landry. Xia Xia is a beautiful young woman that catches the eye of Wang Zhen’s affections, while also coming from an economic class far exceeding that of Zhen’s. She seems detached from the decadent lifestyle of her upbringing, however and takes to experiencing things seen as “lower class”, such as eating street food, with gusto.
Sean Landry is a disillusioned American ex-pat who now lives and works in Shanghai as the lead architect at a conglomeration firm that just so happens to be the company in charge of the project that seeks to tear down the Wang residence. It isn’t firmly stated, but there are enough context clues to get the picture that Sean more or less ran away from America to escape his past failures there. The fact that he listens to self-help audiotapes, however, makes it clear that the change of scenery wasn’t the solution he thought it would be.
The performances in this movie are really strong, with Vivian Wu as Candy Wang, Haoyu Yang as Old Wang, and Mason Lee as Wang Zhen, in particular, carrying this film. Meng Li as Xia Xia and David Rysdahl as Sean Landry manage to hold their own just fine as well. It was particularly nice to see Vivian Wu in action again after so many years, as the last time I had seen her work was in 1991’s The Guyver as Mizuki Segawa.
Zazie Beetz, predictably due to her current name value, is plastered all over the marketing for the film’s global release, but she is functionally only here for a cup of coffee. Her character Angie is another American ex-pat in Shanghai, but she only appears in two or three scenes I can recall, and she barely has any dialogue, which is an absolute shame.
The technical aspects of Dead Pigs are simply stunning. The shots of the Shanghai skyline are absolutely breathtaking, as are the scenes in the rural region surrounding the city. The editing is solid but I didn’t notice much that stood out in either a negative or positive way.
By far one of the strongest aspects of the film is its commentary on late-stage capitalism, specifically how it pertains to China. One of the running themes in the film is modernization vs. traditional values. This is most strongly emphasized in the struggle between Candy Wang and Sean Landry’s company over the house, and it comes to a head in some stellar scenes late in the film involving Candy Wang, Old Wang, and Sean Landry.
Dead Pigs isn’t going to be for everyone, partially due to its subject matter, and partially because how it is structured could make it a little hard to keep track of things for some. However, for those who are into this kind of film, specifically fans of Bong Joon-ho’s masterpiece Parasite, there is a lot to enjoy here. It’s a quirky film that’s a little rough around the edges, but it has an important thing to say, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.