This is one of those movies dealing with the effects of capitalism, as if they were essentially some sort of a Chinese thing. There seems always money available to fund a movie that deals with commodification, estrangement and deracination, even exploration and criminality in China, an established relocation of Western middle class anxieties. Dead Pigs, as part of this agenda, is mostly watchable, with truly compelling cinematography and a splendid performance by Vivian Wu and Yang Haoyu. The screenplay nevertheless left me skeptical. There are some nice absurdities in it and there is a unsettling colonial vibe with some white models in a theme park housing complex. Nevertheless the main characters' background were unconvincingly cobbled together and the author doesn't seem to take their misery all too seriously. I had some issues with the gleefully soundtrack, a vexing contrast to the perceptive camera, underlining Yan's willingness to change instantly from depression to irony, culminating in the scene with the excavator with its surreal turn, after which the movie came to a conciliable, even optimistic end. But then during closing credits you see dead ducks floating in the river, accompanied by a bittersweet pop song, the very same the crowd chanted in front of the excevator, a last indication of the director's waywardness (I probably didn't get the symbolic message).
Review of Dead Pigs
