SYNOPSIS: During the sweltering summertime of rural Spain, Sara carries an extra load of teenage agony due to the perpetual bullying from her peers. She’s also an outsider at home—her parents and little brother just don’t understand her—so, feelings internalized, she’s often found buried in her headphones, drowning out her surroundings. One day, Sara’s usual solo dip at the local pool is disrupted by the presence of a mysterious stranger in the water and an exceptionally grueling bout of abuse at the hands of three girls. But, in a strange twist of fate, along the way home Sara witnesses her bloodied tormentors being kidnapped in the back of the stranger’s van.
Among my top 20 films of 2022, Piggy is an intense, chilling Spanish feature film written and directed by Carlota Pereda, based on her 2019 short film of the same name. It follows Sarah, an overweight girl bullied by others for her appearance. After a near-death encounter, she witnesses her bullies abducted in a man's van, and chooses not to help. But the man later sneaks into her home and threatens her family.
I originally disliked that Sarah's bullies (a) continued to disturb her despite her trying to ignore them to let it pass, and (b) Sarah's bullies shouted that the random stranger (the kidnapper) was her boyfriend, with the stranger able to hear, and (c) the girls took a fishing net and covered Sarah's head with it. These actions seem unrealistic and not believable, especially considering that Sarah never did any wrong towards them. But as the film progressed, I understood the scene was necessary - because the bullies continuously bullied her, Sarah continuously denied knowing details of their disapperance.
The man's motive for kidnapping and even killing is never revealed, and I don't see that to be a problem at all. We don't get his backstory, but the film still works. Anyway, with the girls having bullied Sarah while in his midst, and with them implicating him by teasing that he was Sarah's boyfriend, it is presumed that he kidnapped them due to his anger at the incident. But while Sarah swims in the pool, someone with hands tied is seen behind her (Sarah does not notice this). And it seems like a man, meaning the man has kidnapped and killed even before the incident, and that his targets are not limited to females.
When the man finds Sarah in the woods at night, he covers her mouth to not let her speak, while the other people there pass. This is constructed like a romantic scene, because the man had become fond of Sarah, and Sarah had never been this physically close to a man before.
The film repeatedly shows that despite Sarah not liking her mother, her mother defends her against Claudia's mother and against the police.
After Sarah's mother realises that Sarah had brought back Claudia's towel instead of her own, she asks, "What did you do?". Sarah retorts, "You're just like them". Subtly and cleverly, this is because Sarah's mother asked "What did you do?" instead of "What did you see?" or "What do you know?".
Sarah finds the remaining two girls hung by their hands, and the thing that they were tied to could move them around the room. It seems that the man had them hanging like pigs to be slaughtered, because the girls had previously called Sarah "Piggy" and had almost killed her when they bullied her at the pool.
After Sarah kills the man, she points his rifle at her bullies and pause. She then shoots and we find that she shot at the chains tied to them. I do not believe Sarah ever contemplated killing her bullies. I think she was silently conveying to them (a) she could hurt them like they had hurt her, and she could then allege that it was the man who killed them, but she rejects violence, and (b) to not reveal to others that she had known about their disappearance all along, as Sarah had previously lied.
After Sarah frees her bullies, she walks off without speaking to them. This implies that Sarah will never forgive them, a fitting ending rather than sentimental.
I have only one major dislike - The man sneaks into Sarah's home to rummage through her clothes. After Sarah's father finds him, he repeatedly punches and kicks him. He then saw Sarah's mother and hit her too, then wanted to draw his knife on Sarah's younger brother until Sarah begged him not to. I guess his reasons for assaulting them are that Sarah did not like them and that he did not want them to report him. I guess he wanted to hurt Sarah's brother because he did not want the chance of him finding his parents passed out and immediately report him. Her brother never notices the ruckus. I strongly dislike that the film had the man hurt Sarah's family, because the film was previously trying to make audiences side with the man and this demolishes that, and obviously Sarah would not want her family hurt.
A minor dislike is that I thought the bull was meant to symbolise something, but I have not found any convincing symbolism. When Sarah was looking for her phone in the woods, she met a bull and froze, and the bull let her pass. Later the bull gets in the path of the man driving his car with Sarah, injuring Sarah but her fainting bought her some time when she awoke, which she could have used to try and escape, but used instead to try and free the captive girls.
Lastly, the film ends with Claudia's ex-boyfriend driving Sarah away on his motorcycle, with intense sunlight in the afternoon. This is akin to romantic films, subverting expectations. The male driving the female on a motorcycle reminds me iconically of Roman Holiday (1953). However, the shot goes over the woods instead of lingering on them driving off. Why the woods? The woods are where he kidnapped the girls, but why focus on them here?
This film succeeds as a pressure cooker, and I always love thrillers that never die down. Excellent directing, original writing, cinematography, performances, and if I was an Academy member, I would genuinely nominate it for international feature film (although it wasn't submitted for contention, I'd say it deserves a nomination even among the top five films for the category).