Dead Pigs

海上浮城

China, 2018, colour, 2.35:1, 130 mins.

Director: Yan Yuxi 阎羽茜 [Cathy Yan].

Rating: 6/10.

Veteran actress Wu Junmei [Vivian Wu] motors this sharply observed but over-long black comedy about modern-day dreamers who fool themselves.

STORY

Shanghai, March. Wang Genfa (Yang Haoyu) is a pig farmer in the country town of Jiaxing who has just bought a virtual-reality headset and shows it off to his fellow villagers. The eccentric Wang Zhaodi (Wu Junmei) owns a beauty salon and lives alone in the house in which she grew up, refusing to sell to property developer Golden Happiness which wants to demolish the building for a major building project. Sean Landry (David Rysdahl) is a young US architect who’s lived in Shanghai for 18 months and has his first big chance working on the Golden Happiness project. Wang Zhen (Li Chun) works in the city as a waiter in a fancy restaurant, where partygirl Xiaxia (Li Meng), the bored daughter of a rich businessman, accidentally leaves her mobile phone one evening. On the way home Xiaxia crashes her car and ends up for a few days in hospital, where Wang Zhen finds her and returns her phone. Wang Genfa finds he’s been cheated in a financial investment and is given two weeks by loan sharks to repay his debt of RMB252,000. Like other pig farmers, his animals have mysteriously died and no customers will buy the meat. He asks Wang Zhaodi, his younger sister, for a loan but she refuses to sell the family house, even though he owns a share of it. Angry, Wang Genfa throws his dead pigs into the river, joining many others that are floating down towards the sea. Xiaxia spots Wang Zhen at the restaurant and they later meet for a snack and a ride on his bike. In desperation, Wang Genfa visits Wang Zhen, his son, to ask for a loan, as Wang Zhen has claimed he’s made a success of himself and owns his own flat; Wang Genfa is disappointed to discover the truth. The TV news reports that thousands of pig carcasses are now floating down the river and a team of specialists has come from Beijing to investigate. Meanwhile, Sean Landry, who’s been moonlighting as a “western celebrity speaker” since being approached by US talent agent Angie (Zazie Beetz), tries to impress his bosses by volunteering to visit Wang Zhaodi to break the negotiating impasse over her house.

REVIEW

A sharply observed black comedy on how people fool themselves in their ambitions, Dead Pigs 海上浮城 is a notable feature debut by Chinese American film-maker Yan Yuxi 阎羽茜 [Cathy Yan] that would have been even better at least 30 minutes shorter. Dominated by a barnstorming performance from veteran Shanghai actress Wu Junmei 邬君梅 [Vivian Wu], as an eccentric beauty-salon owner who defies a property developer’s wrecking crew, the film is basically five individuals’ stories knitted together into a leisurely developed portrait of life in present-day China. Though technically very assured, it does, however, make its points quite early on; the final half-hour is especially drawn out, with nothing new brought to the table.

After premiering at the Sundance film festival in Jan 2018, Pigs was only released in the Mainland a year later, where it crashed with box office of only RMB500,000. (It has yet to be commercially released in the US.) By then, however, Yan had already begun shooting her first mainstream Hollywood production, the DC Comics superheroine movie Birds of Prey, due to be released in Feb 2020. Pigs may well be an anomaly in her career: born near Shanghai but raised (via Hong Kong) in the US, she’s on record as saying she may not necessarily make another Chinese film.

Though it’s a Mainland-financed production, Pigs has a heavy US slant in its key crew, all with indie/short-film credentials: New York-based d.p. Federico Cesca (like Yan, a graduate of the Tisch School of the Arts), composer Andrew Orkin (who scored two of Yan’s previous shorts), and editor Alexander Kopit (Blumenthal, 2013; Somewhere in the Middle, 2015). As well as leading the cast, Wu is also credited as a co-producer, while Mainland film-festival darling Jia Zhangke 贾樟柯 is billed as creative producer 监制. Shot in Shanghai in spring 2017, with some work also in Beijing, the film completed shooting in New York, even though the story is entirely set in and around Shanghai.

Despite its mixed crew and locations, the finished product is extremely smooth, silkily cut by Kopit and convincingly lit by Cesca in both town and country, composed and handheld. Yan takes a leisurely approach to introducing her main characters, and the family connections between three of them are not made clear until about a half-hour in. There’s the feisty, theatrical Wang Zhaodi (Wu), who’s the life snd soul of her beauty-salon business but actually lives alone in a two-storey house due for demolition in a wasteland marked for a huge property development. Her elder brother is a pig farmer in the countryside who loses his stock to a mysterious disease and dumps them in the river. His son lives in the city and hides the fact he’s just a restaurant employee from his dad. Meanwhile, he’s fallen for a rich man’s daughter who’s going through an existential crisis of her own. In a nod to her own international background (or maybe US distribution), Yan also shoehorns in an eager-beaver young American architect trying to make his fame and fortune in cosmopolitan Shanghai.

All of them are essentially chasing dreams that are shown to be delusory or empty, though Yan’s screenplay makes it clear that the film is a critique of society in general, not just 21st-century China. The pig farmer’s fascination with a virtual-reality headset he’s just bought is an over-obvious metaphor for this, though, like the recurrent image of dead pigs’ carcasses floating down the river, it’s done with a surreal touch that’s generally engaging. Even so, at 100 minutes rather than 130 the film would have been much sharper: individual scenes tend to run on too long and could easily be trimmed.

In her most substantial big-screen role since period drama Dinner for Six 六人晚餐 (2016), Wu, backed by some colourful art direction by Yao Jun 姚俊 and costumes by Wang Zixin 王子欣, dominates the film (and especially the finale) as an eccentric businesswoman fighting property developers and hectoring her clients in fruity Shanghainese (“Here are no ugly women, only lazy ones!”). She’s backed by convincing playing from Yang Haoyu 杨浩宇 (the father in Young Love Lost 少年巴比伦, 2015) as her pig-farmer brother and, less so, from US-born Li Chun 李淳 [Mason Lee, son of director Ang] as his son, an underwritten role that never really gets off the page. As the rich girl he falls for, the always interesting Li Meng 李梦 (Young Love Lost; Vortex 铤而走险, 2019) shades a potentially cliched part. US actor David Rysdahl (gay drama The Revival, 2017) is okay as the American architect, though his role tends to come and go, not fully integrated into the structure. He’s at his best in scenes with German-American actress Zazie Beetz (Joker, 2019), who eats up the almost surreal role of a talent agent.

The film’s Chinese title means “Floating City by the Sea”. The subplot of the indebted pig farmer and his “successful” son derives from Yan’s earlier, 20-minute short Down River 溯源 (2016). Pigs’ title image was inspired by a real-life event in Mar 2013, when 16,000 diseased carcasses were found in the Jiapingtang river, near Shanghai.

CREDITS

Presented by Zhejiang Dongyang Microcosmic Pictures (CN), Media Asia Zexin Films (Shanghai) (CN), Beijing Jingxi Culture & Tourism (CN). Produced by Seesaw Entertainment (Beijing) (CN).

Script: Yan Yuxi [Cathy Yan]. Photography: Federico Cesca (general); Zeng Jinwei (Beijing unit); Michael Wood (New York unit). Editing: Alexander Kopit. Music: Andrew Orkin. Art direction: Yao Jun. Styling: Wang Zixin. Sound: Li Shuo, Mariusz Glabinski, Peter Waggoner. Visual effects: Aaron Raff (Phosphene).

Cast: Wu Junmei [Vivian Wu] (Wang Zhaodi/Candy), Yang Haoyu (Wang Genfa), Li Meng (Xiaxia), Li Chun [Mason Lee] (Wang Zhen), David Rysdahl (Sean Landry), Hu Yangyang (Xiaofan, Wang Xiaodi’s assistant), Cai Gang (Yu), Zhu Guoyu (lawyer), Li Jinfei (Bo), Sun Mengchun (Mei), Cao Kefan (Liu Jun), Wen Han (Zhang Xun, TV reporter), Huang Ruyu (Da Tou/Big Head), Sima Wangjie (Hei Pi), Xiao Pang (butcher), Miao Liang (clown), Zazie Beetz (Angie), Archibald McColl (Phil Johnson), Zhang Yan (Jonathan), Chen Tao (restaurant manager), Xue Yuanyuan (watermelon seller), Zhang Zhihong (demolition foremen), Tsurkan Daria (Ania), Chi Furong (Fu).

Premiere: Sundance Film Festival (World Cinema Dramatic Competition), 19 Jan 2018.

Release: China, 25 Jan 2019.