Lots of things do battle in Piggy, but most of all it’s a story about a teenager at war with herself. Or is it a slasher movie? Or a coming of ager with a visceral psychology at work? Bit of all three, and possibly a few more things besides.
Writer/director Carlota Pereda welds all the aspects together brilliantly and in her star, Laura Galán, she has an actor who can emote in any direction. This film gets better the longer it goes on and the more we see of Galán.
There is quite a lot to see. Sara (Galán) is a big girl, the daughter of a pork butcher in a small Spanish town, she is mercilessly bullied by the local mean girls – Maca (Claudia Salas), Roci (Camille Aguilar) and most distressingly Claudia (Irene Ferreiro), who used to be her friend until she went to the dark side. They call her Cerda, or Cerdita – Piggy in Spanish – make oink noises to her face and suggest she smells of bacon.
Things come to a head one day at the pool when this pack of bitches physically threaten Sara while she’s swimming in an otherwise deserted pool. They end up stealing her clothes, forcing her to walk home in a bikini that’s disappearing into the folds of her flesh. Rewind a touch – who was that mystery guy at the pool, the faintly menacing one who seemed to be watching Maca and co while they were taunting Sara? And did we glimpse a body tied to some piece of masonry sitting at the bottom of the pool while Sara was floundering in the water?
Without giving too much away, a slasher/horror-movie scenario now plays out, with the mean girls finding themselves at the wrong end of extreme unpleasantness dished out by the mystery man and Sara finding herself entirely compromised. As the bearded stranger (Richard Holmes, billed as El desconocido, or “the unknown”) does his worst, Sara isn’t sure whether to be happy that her saviour has finally come, or appalled that her “friends” are having a very bad time of it.
Swerving the cliches of the slasher movie, Pereda sells it as a coming of ager with all the usual staples of the genre. Sara and the unattainable hot guy (José Pastor), Sara and her attempts to assert herself against her tough mother (Carmen Machi) and useless father (Julián Valcárcel), Sara and her own burgeoning sexuality, all set in a febrile small town where old grudges fester.
Attention to detail makes for intimate drama – Sara’s mother tweezing the hairs from her chin, Sara’s father eating his dinner shirtless because it’s so hot, Sara herself frequently shot almost in the buff. And Pereda catches the atmosphere of a Spanish town and its hot summer nights when people sit outside in the cool of the evening because the house is too warm.
Galán is what sells the movie though, one moment the stroppy teenager, the next a crybaby, a bullied girl, a tough nut, a resourceful smartie, the underdog trying to find a purchase on the world. And she uses her size to add a layer of vulnerability. Running for help carrying all that weight could be funny, done the wrong way, but it’s angst-inducing the way Galán and Pereda do it.
Will she save these friends who have made her life miserable, or let them die? Does the mystery killer guy really exist, or is he a manifestation of Sara’s inner turmoil. Does the fact that dad’s a pork butcher have any implications at all? Having opened the movie with images of blood sausage lying in coils, and chops being hacked off a larger piece of meat, Pereda suggests it might. Tasty.
Piggy – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2024
