PARK CITY, Utah—It is an act of supreme hubris to use an iconic cathedral, over a century in-the-building and as yet unfinished, as the model for a proposed mega-mega-housing complex. The Chinese ersatz Sagrada Família is fictional, but the ethos of hyperdevelopment behind it is very true to life. So is the 2013 Huangpu River Incident. At that time, more than 16,000 deceased swine were fished out of the river near Shanghai, after a mysterious epidemic swept through subsistence pork farms. The starkly demarcated worlds of the real estate-developing haves and the pig-farming have-nots will intersect and overlap in Cathy Yan’s “Dead Pigs,” which premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival.
Old Wang is one of those pig farmers whose stock suddenly died. It happened at a terrible time for him. He thought he had invested in a promising startup, but it was really just a scam. Unfortunately, his debt to the loan sharks is still due in two weeks’ time. Old Wang had hoped his son Wang Zhen could help. He had led his father to believe he had made good in Shanghai, but he is really just living hand-to-mouth as a busboy. Nevertheless, he manages to befriend and subsequently fall in love with Xia Xia, a fuerdai party girl.
