A bull is on the loose in the small Spanish town of Extremadura in “Piggy,” but its escape from a matador barely raises an eyebrow, the news prompting a local (Carmen Machi) to laugh “Remember when one got into Luciana’s House?” Her daughter Sara (Laura Galán) has more pressing concerns, glued to Instagram where life would seem to be happening without her, scrolling through scenes of others her age at the beach while she’s stuck at her parents’ butcher shop, stuffing sausage for her father (Julián Valcárcel) when she’s not studying up for school. As a teen, to have to spend so much time with her family is indignity enough for Sara, but her work combined with her Rubenesque physique has led to a nasty nickname alluded to in the title of Carlota Pereda’s sensational thriller are bound to push her to the edge, particularly when there are a group of mean girls who would seem to have full-time jobs as bullying her.
The fact that Sara has experience hunting bunnies for her father to sell could suggest that she’ll know what to do when Roci, Maca and Claudia, whose betrayal is especially brutal after the two were once close friends, start to get #piggy trending on the same social media feeds where Sara goes to escape, snapping a shot of her at work. However, Pereda has something entirely different in mind when revenge would actually be too clean for the butcher’s daughter, following her on a clandestine trip to the local pool during off-hours where she won’t be body shamed. She doesn’t think much of a stranger (Richard Holmes) who can be seen swimming at the other end of the water, but she is startled when her trio of tormenters find her, ready to embarrass her again to feed the social media beast and in one of the most terrifying sequences imaginable, all without an ounce of blood being shed, Pereda sees Sara utterly mortified but plunged into an entirely different dilemma when soon after Roci, Maca and Claudia go missing in addition to a pair murdered employees at the nearby restaurant and while she isn’t responsible, Sara has to decide how much to tell others about what she knows, justifiably fearing their return.
In a fresh and ferociously assured feature debut, Pereda has a clear feel for striking imagery – she and cinematographer Rita Noriega’s shrewd blocking throughout shows how much Sara feels she needs to hide from others well before becoming a prime suspect and the sequence in which she flees from her bullies in a bikini is instantly iconic. However, what’s even more impressive is how there’s constantly more going on in each scene than what meets the eye, with Sara having a mother who is critical of her weight privately while fiercely defensive of her to anyone who comes calling reflecting how protection can become its own form of being trapped for someone as picked on as her. Galán, who has the exact right mix of innocence with the sense she’s capable of something sinister, is an incredible discovery as well, yielding the increasingly wild choices that Sara must for her survival unquestionable and riveting, seemingly capable of anything, and with all the makings of a monster that occur in “Piggy,” it’s the sheer talent on display that looms largest.
“Piggy” does not yet have U.S. distribution.
