Cinema du Brute, which has given us CARRIE (1976), EVILSPEAK (1981) and MAY (2002), gets a 2022 airing in PIGGY (CERDITA), a slickly made Spanish import that, as with many horror films these days, was based on a short film (see below).
That short, written and directed by Carlota Pereda, was completed in 2018, and is now streaming on YouTube as part of the Alter horror shorts collection. Laura Galan essays the title role of a rotund teenager who after being tormented in a public swimming pool by some bitchy classmates gets—or is, more accurately, granted-–a horrific revenge.
Laura Galan deserves credit for sheer ballsiness.
The feature version of PIGGY saw Carlota Pereda returning as writer-director and Laura Galan reprising her role of Sara, a.k.a. “Piggy,” “Fucking Fatso” and “Miss Bacon,” who works in her parents’ butcher shop. She’s opposed (once again) by a band of skinny schoolmates who torment her incessantly—until one day when, heading home after being bullied, she sees one of her tormentors locked in the back of a van, crying for help. Sara does nothing, and it’s later revealed that the abducted girl has not turned back up in town, and that another has gone missing.
Feature Film Trailer
The bullying of the early scenes, in which Sara has her head netted, is forced to parade through town in a bikini and nearly gets run over by a car, is a bit overwrought. But then, just as it seems the film has hit its stride (at the point where the short ended) it becomes quite inert, with a narrative that meanders around rather than directly confront its themes.
But then, just as it seems the film has hit its stride (at the point where the short ended) it becomes quite inert, with a narrative that meanders around rather than directly confront its themes.
Original Short Film
Pereda certainly finds ever-more novel ways to humiliate her protagonist, who spends much of the film running around in bikinis, is seen masturbating, has her period in the middle of a police inquest and, most embarrassing of all, develops a relationship with the abductor (Richard Homes). The latter, a pot-bellied young misogynist, takes a shine to Sara—who, conflicted about whether to save her bullies or leave them to their fate, agrees to take a ride with him in his van after he bursts into her house and kills her parents. Will she do the right thing and help free her captive tormentors?
Here Galan offers a complex and sympathetic characterization that nearly, but not quite, makes up for the film’s shortcomings.
Laura Galan deserves credit for sheer ballsiness. Unlike the Hollywood fat person model, which tends to involve skinny performers in fat suits (see Goldie Hawn in DEATH BECOMES HER, Gwyneth Paltrow in SHALLOW HAL and Brandan Fraser in THE WHALE), Miss Galan lets it all hang out (so to speak). She also improves mightily upon her performance in the PIGGY short, which felt extremely one-note (it seemed she was perpetually sad and/or scared). Here Galan offers a complex and sympathetic characterization that nearly, but not quite, makes up for the film’s shortcomings.
Vital Statistics
PIGGY (CERDITA)
Morena Films
Director: Carlota Pereda
Producer: Merry Colomer
Screenplay: Carlota Pereda
Cinematography: Rita Noriega
Editing: David Pelegrin
Cast: Laura Galan, Richard Holmes, Carmen Machi, Irene Ferreiro, Camille Aguilar, Jose Pastor, Fernando Delgado-Hierro, Julian Valcarcel, Amets Otxoa, Pilar Castro, Claudia Salas