Film Review: PIGGY: Town Scapegoat Lifts Herself Up to Grindhouse Hero [Sundance 2022]

Piggy

Piggy (2021) Film Review from the 45th Annual Sundance Film Festival, a movie directed by Carlota Pereda, starring Laura Galan.

If vacationing teenaged girls were the only bullies targeting overweight Sara (Laura Galán), the daughter of the local butcher, she might have had fared better that particular summer. But Sara is not so lucky; the entire town bullies her in one way or another.

Even when Sara’s mother (Carmen Machi) stands up to her neighbors accusing her daughter, it sounds as though she presumes Sara’s guilt and is merely defending her daughter out of maternal duty. Her father (Julián Valcárcel) is the exception that proves the rule. He is content to alternately chide or support Sara in a lackadaisical sort of way; neither has much impact on Sara’s isolation–until an admirer (Richard Holmes) comes along and semi-courts her from a distance: a serial killer who specifically targets Sara’s tormenters as a sort of tribute.

When Sara first acknowledges this killer at the community swimming pool, it feels like a set-up. Bravely toting her bag with her towel and sundry times, and even more bravely wearing a bikini that sinks into her flesh, Sara is goaded into the water by a taunting triplet of out-of-town teenage girls. She submerges to escape the ridicule and swims past the killer’s first victim–the beefy lifeguard, evidently anchored to the bottom of the pool.

Sara reemerges to discover her teenaged tormentors making off with her bag, leaving her to walk home on a dirt road, practically naked and shivering. A distinctive white van drives by, a bit too slowly for comfort, slows to a stop, and the driver opens the door and drops her bag by the wayside. Sara recognizes a girl, blood and screaming, in the rear window of the van as one of those at the poolside. The driver lingers, as though to make sure Sara recognizes the captive, and then drives off.

Sara is too puzzled at this point to take any particular action. She suspects the driver of the van killed the lifeguard and has now abducted at least one of her tormenters. But conditioned as she is to be the town pariah, she realizes her awkward position as being suspect herself. To make matters worse, the more she delays the more suspect she becomes. An added complication is the suspect van driver’s deferential interest in her, the novelty of which she finds especially seductive. As a result, Sara and her admirer form a relationship based on a sort of mutual tease.

Sara’s silence catches the eyes of the local police force, a father/son duo, Juan Carlos and son Juan Carlitos (Chema del Barco and Fernando Delgado-Hierro respectively). Carlitos had observed Sara leaving the pool shortly before the lifeguard’s body is discovered. Consequently he is convinced of Sara’s complicity, if not her guilt, while Carlos trounces the notion that Sara hasn’t enough gumption to act out of vengeance.

Caught in the crossfire of allure and fascination, Sara stays silent and refuses to betray the one person with whom she feels empathy, both insulated from ‘normal’ society on a biological basis, Sara because of her weight, and her admirer, hard-wired and driven to kill. This adds to Sara’s moralistic struggle between doing the ‘right’ thing: for society or herself: that is, acceptance–maybe even love–for who she is.

Meanwhile, Sara and her killer beau meet on the sly–probably the closest thing to dating that Sara has ever had–not for sex but moments of real tenderness. It becomes evident that this is the conflict needing resolution and drives the main suspense of the film. This takes place in the grindhouse, where she discovers two of her poolside tormenters still alive, begging for Sara’s assistance.

Here the suspense reaches its critical mass. One may feel a bit disappointed at Sara’s ultimate choice to defer to society over her own needs and try to effect a rescue, successfully as it turns out. Sara does liberate the girls in a surprising way that satisfies the true north of her moral compass as well as her contempt for cruelty and selfishness.

The depth and cleverness among the buckets of blood puts Piggy a cut (or two) among others for aficionados of grindhouse cinema. For those who are not, there is plenty to appreciate this film in retrospect.

Rating: 7/10

Leave your thoughts on this Piggy review and the film below in the comments section. Readers seeking to support this type of content can visit our Patreon Page and become one of FilmBook’s patrons. Readers seeking more Sundance Film Festival news can visit our Sundance Film Festival Page, our Film Festival Page, and our Film Festival Facebook Page. Readers seeking more film reviews can visit our Movie Review Page, our Movie Review Twitter Page, and our Movie Review Facebook Page. Want up-to-the-minute notifications? FilmBook staff members publish articles by Email, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest, Reddit, and Flipboard.