Apparently I'm one of the immature teens mentioned in another comment, because I enjoyed this film very much--as did the dozen reviewers, doubtless shallow teens also, cited on the DVD case as having rated it at four stars. It reminded me of early Jane Campion and Vincent Ward in the insular, almost hermetically sealed world it portrays; and I wonder if it's only coincidence that it too comes from an island culture.
The story is a variation on Les Enfants Terribles in which two young people, telepathically bonded from birth, create a secret society--which in essence constitutes their entire life--consisting of only the two of them. They communicate in a strange private argot which I assume is taken from the novel (it sounds like the product of a novel writer rather than a scriptwriter), vernacular speech elevated into near-poetry. The characters' monologues are quite remarkable, as delivered by the two principal actors. So are the actors themselves: Cillian Murphy, who has the looks to make his fortune as a soap-opera antihero, shows he's much better than that portends, and Elaine Cassidy, who has made rather a line of playing Miranda-like heroines sidetracked into unfortunate attachments, can clearly do more, too: some day I'd like to see her as an equally single-minded Lady Macbeth.
The film is strikingly shot, uniquely scored, and held me absorbed all the way through. It has only one large fault, which is the flip side of its biggest asset: its simplified, clarified style, which is much like that of The Piano or Vigil, and in this case parallels the simplified reality of the leading characters. It has this inherent drawback, however: it leads the film away from more complex, messier motives and situations lest they disturb the neatness of the pattern. In a story like this they necessarily arise, and increasingly so as the story goes on, because the subject ultimately is the characters' emergence, kicking and screaming, into the larger world. And so in some respects the transition confuses.
For instance, in the early scenes the bonded characters are shown as living in identical houses side by side and coming and going symmetrically, in the Peter Greenaway manner; but this kind of fairy-tale fantasy disappears as the film progresses. True, in the course of things the characters move from a private reality to one more generally shared; but their houses are part of the latter, something they have no control over, and should be pictured in the same way as the rest of the outside world. Or, if the houses were meant to be seen from the point of view of the film itself, everything should have been shown as equally fantastical.
Similarly, the script is clear as long as the characters confine themselves to their two-person bubble, from which everybody else is excluded, but then, after they're separated, it never clarifies what exactly happens to their telepathic bond. Does it snap as soon as they're parted? does it weaken with distance? Since it's been the dominant force in their lives, the one secure thing that they've never been without--and the thing the film has been presenting to us for an hour--we should have seen clearly the moment at which each of them lost it and what that loss did to him or her.
Following the separation, the structure of the story makes it clear that the girl escapes the boy's influence, so that when they reunite she's no longer a willing partner in what he does; but her turning point isn't shown and her changed attitude isn't defined or explored.
Finally, though less importantly, the climax of the story is incredible the way it's staged. Let it pass that seventeen-year-olds are able to buy drinks without question (perhaps on the Irish club scene they can); in the big club to which the couple ultimately find their way, the boy commits an act of battery, probably of murder, and then leaves, with nobody but the girl trying to stop him. I would imagine that in the novel it was described as happening briefly, on a crowded floor where nobody could see quite what was going on; but in the film it's the show in the center ring, it goes on for a very long time, and there are no bouncers anywhere--or, failing bouncers, a few sturdy lads of the type in which Irish stories abound--or for that matter, a single sturdy lad armed with a blunt object in hand. I can't think why the director would have done something to incur disbelief so strongly so near the end of the film: this is it like, eh?
Still, in spite of a few missed notes, Disco Pigs is the most interesting film I've seen in a while, and probably the most interesting Irish film ever (though I confess I've not seen many).
The story is a variation on Les Enfants Terribles in which two young people, telepathically bonded from birth, create a secret society--which in essence constitutes their entire life--consisting of only the two of them. They communicate in a strange private argot which I assume is taken from the novel (it sounds like the product of a novel writer rather than a scriptwriter), vernacular speech elevated into near-poetry. The characters' monologues are quite remarkable, as delivered by the two principal actors. So are the actors themselves: Cillian Murphy, who has the looks to make his fortune as a soap-opera antihero, shows he's much better than that portends, and Elaine Cassidy, who has made rather a line of playing Miranda-like heroines sidetracked into unfortunate attachments, can clearly do more, too: some day I'd like to see her as an equally single-minded Lady Macbeth.
The film is strikingly shot, uniquely scored, and held me absorbed all the way through. It has only one large fault, which is the flip side of its biggest asset: its simplified, clarified style, which is much like that of The Piano or Vigil, and in this case parallels the simplified reality of the leading characters. It has this inherent drawback, however: it leads the film away from more complex, messier motives and situations lest they disturb the neatness of the pattern. In a story like this they necessarily arise, and increasingly so as the story goes on, because the subject ultimately is the characters' emergence, kicking and screaming, into the larger world. And so in some respects the transition confuses.
For instance, in the early scenes the bonded characters are shown as living in identical houses side by side and coming and going symmetrically, in the Peter Greenaway manner; but this kind of fairy-tale fantasy disappears as the film progresses. True, in the course of things the characters move from a private reality to one more generally shared; but their houses are part of the latter, something they have no control over, and should be pictured in the same way as the rest of the outside world. Or, if the houses were meant to be seen from the point of view of the film itself, everything should have been shown as equally fantastical.
Similarly, the script is clear as long as the characters confine themselves to their two-person bubble, from which everybody else is excluded, but then, after they're separated, it never clarifies what exactly happens to their telepathic bond. Does it snap as soon as they're parted? does it weaken with distance? Since it's been the dominant force in their lives, the one secure thing that they've never been without--and the thing the film has been presenting to us for an hour--we should have seen clearly the moment at which each of them lost it and what that loss did to him or her.
Following the separation, the structure of the story makes it clear that the girl escapes the boy's influence, so that when they reunite she's no longer a willing partner in what he does; but her turning point isn't shown and her changed attitude isn't defined or explored.
Finally, though less importantly, the climax of the story is incredible the way it's staged. Let it pass that seventeen-year-olds are able to buy drinks without question (perhaps on the Irish club scene they can); in the big club to which the couple ultimately find their way, the boy commits an act of battery, probably of murder, and then leaves, with nobody but the girl trying to stop him. I would imagine that in the novel it was described as happening briefly, on a crowded floor where nobody could see quite what was going on; but in the film it's the show in the center ring, it goes on for a very long time, and there are no bouncers anywhere--or, failing bouncers, a few sturdy lads of the type in which Irish stories abound--or for that matter, a single sturdy lad armed with a blunt object in hand. I can't think why the director would have done something to incur disbelief so strongly so near the end of the film: this is it like, eh?
Still, in spite of a few missed notes, Disco Pigs is the most interesting film I've seen in a while, and probably the most interesting Irish film ever (though I confess I've not seen many).