Disco Pigs

Disco Pigs has a wonderful beginning. Our heroine narrates as she escapes from her mother's womb. Her narration is wonderfully bitter about coming into the dreaded world. The images are startlingly original; the babies large eyes comparable with the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey. We meet the baby's mother and father who, we're told, will never be as happy as they are at that moment. Then the baby is laid to rest. It starts to cry but stops when it sees a crying baby next to it. The neighbouring baby stops crying. The infants stare at each other, put their hands out and hold hands. I don't know how this scene was achieved. I can imagine recently born babies aren't easy to direct. What I do know is that this is a remarkably effective opening. One of the best and most original I've seen.

Unfortunately, the remainder of the film is not so great. It tries hard and its young director clearly adores the source material but it is this material that's the problem. There's very little new here. And the characters often let themselves down with strange shifts in their traits. For example, the bitter narration I've just spoken about is conducted by Sinead (Runt), the female lead. She's never as bitter again as she is at the beginning. It's a shame the movie focuses on her character at the start. It should have concentrated its efforts on Pig (played by the remarkable Cillian Murphy). His motivations are far more realised. Runt is a much shadier character and the audience never really understands her. Why does she not take to Pig? Why does she take to the bartender, is it his almost illiteracy or his red jumper? Is she gay? Does she fall in love with her roommate?

Comparisons to A Clockwork Orange or The Butcher Boy are unfair. It doesn't possess the soul of either of these. In fact, the violence here is far more sickening because its so gratuitous. Comparisons to Heavenly Creatures are more apt, but that movie was based on a true story, a trait this movie seems to think it has.

The acting from the leads especially Murphy is very solid, though he has a tendency to mumble. They both have a strong screen presence. The direction from Kirsten Sheridan is inconsistent. The beginning is fantastic and flashback scenes seeing the pair as children are equally remarkable but she chooses cliched editing for the disco scenes and leaves in a soliloquoy which betrays the films stage origins and leaves the audience desperately uncomfortable. Otherwise, she has plenty of potential.

Lastly, Disco Pigs was the first film I've seen that focuses for a large part on my native city. It was wonderful to see and I hope to see more. Sheridan though seems to have missed a few geography lessons. When Pig takes the bus from Cork, the film cuts to him on the bus and back to an establishing shot of a restaurant that's in Cork, he then hitchhikes to Donegal, which is about a five hour drive, then miraculously arrives back in Cork, all in the space of a day. Goofs aplenty.

This movie was incredibly beautiful. Sure there were some awkward and hard-to-watch moments, but overall a good movie and absolutely heartbreaking.

Pig (Cillian Murphy) loves Runt (Elaine Cassidy) and Runt loves Pig. This has been true since their shared birth date, and their love excludes all the rest of creation. This idyllic love is immortal, eternal... at least for a while.

Pig and Runt are childlike teens approaching adulthood, at least physically. Mentally, they are what they have always been, two children lost in each other. Then, one day, Pig sees Runt in a new and different way. Suddenly, she's no longer the girl he's grown up with. She's a beautiful, desirable woman. From here, the relationship begins to change.

Pig is ill-equipped to deal with the emotions that overwhelm him. The crazy innocence of youth is being replaced by something else. Something dangerous, even deadly.

DISCO PIGS is a tragic, obsessive love story, similar in vein to HEAVENLY CREATURES. Both films concern an all-consuming love that blots out all else. Both are among the few "love stories" I can bear watching. Both are astonishing...

There's a large psychiatric literature on the "twinning effect," which is often a beautiful thing, but in its pathologic manifestation shows up as what's called "symbiotic psychosis." In plain language, although not biological twins, the two main characters here grew up so closely intertwined that their private world disallowed the intrusion of mundane reality. "Private language" is often a characteristic of this clinical syndrome, and in the movie the heavy Cork dialect accentuated (at least for non-Irish) the barrier between the characters and the viewer. Does anyone remember Melanie's song, "We were so close, there was no room/ We bled inside each other's wounds"? Quite apropos. Also, I felt reflections of "David & Lisa," but updated and sort of run in reverse. As with much Irish literature, one has to be prepared for a view of humanity that never crawls out from under Original Sin, but nevertheless this is a serious work, very much worth watching, and deserved a better title.

Its amazing how some of the comments here have completely missed the point of this film. If you haven't seen it yet, I should warn that these comments may give away some plot points.

The facile answers that one user suggest this film offers to the question of "what is love?" don't really deserve aknowledgement. But lets do so anyway.

It would be hard to find a more poignant and complex depiction of the strive for 'pure' love in the face of an ever intruding reality. Pig's love for Runt is the one thing that is whole and real in his life. Yet life, and the fact of their growing up, is slowly taking her away from him. Without her, he himself has no real existence. Therefore his love takes on a growing desperation as he feels her slip away from him.

A commenter questions why runt never "takes to" Pig. Why she is attracted to the bartender.

The point of the film is that she can live in and relate to an outer world beyond her relationship with Pig, while Pig cannot. This world is represented by the barman she dances with, by the roomate she slowly begins to open up to. It is this ability that enables her to survive whilst Pig is spiralling into an ever more violent self-destruction. She loves Pig but realises that the insulated world thay have cocooned themselves within must fall apart. She ultimately saves him from a world that he cannot live in and that she knows he must.

The real triumph of this film is how it completely trancends its stage bound roots. The action is opened out and incorporates a range of characters which, if never fully rounded, likewise are never mere cliches. There is in fact only one speech lifted directly from the play, where Pig expresses his growing frustration as sexuality begins to enter their relationship. The ending soliloquay which one commenter feels betrayed the stage origins was in fact completely new to the film, and indeed the ending itself is completely rewritten.

The direction of this film is lively and interesting. Veering between the hyper-kinetic disco scenes and the peaceful fairy tale world of Pig and Runt's fantasies without jarring. It manages to take Pig on a road trip without ever losing pace and leaves us with a truly heartwrenching scene of sacrifice and beauty.

This is the future of Irish cinema; fresh, exciting directors and a depiction of Ireland that manages to be both free from stereotypical depictions of Irishness whilst maintaining a distinct storytelling style. Go see it.