''Dead Pigs'' ( zh, 海上浮城; literally "floating city on the sea") is a 2018 comedy drama film written and directed by

Cathy Yan Cathy Y. Yan is a Chinese-born American film director, screenwriter, and producer. Her films include the comedy-drama film ''Dead Pigs'' (2018) and '' Birds of Prey'' (2020), the eighth installment of the DC Extended Universe. Early life and e ...

in her directorial feature film debut. It stars

Vivian Wu Vivian Wu ( Wu Junmei; ; born February 5, 1967) is a Chinese-American actress.Chen Nan ''China Daily'', 27 April 2007. Her big break came in 1987, appearing in the biographical film '' The Last Emperor''. She later went to starring in films '' ...

, Haoyu Yang,

Mason Lee Mason Lee (born May 30, 1990) is a Taiwanese-American actor. He is the son of three-time Academy Award-winning director Ang Lee, and Jane Lin, a microbiology researcher. He is best known for playing the role of Teddy in ''The Hangover Part II ...

, Meng Li, and David Rysdahl. The film had its world premiere in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition section at the

2018 Sundance Film Festival The 2018 Sundance Film Festival took place from January 18 to January 28, 2018. The first lineup of competition films was announced on November 29, 2017. Awards The following awards were presented: * U.S. Dramatic Grand Jury Prize Award: '' Th ...

on January 19, 2018. It was released worldwide on February 12, 2021 on

Mubi Mubi (; stylized as MUBI; The Auteurs before 2010) is a global curated film streaming platform, production company and film distributor. Mubi produces and theatrically distributes films by emerging and established filmmakers, which are exclusivel ...

Synopsis

A bumbling pig farmer, a feisty salon owner, a sensitive busboy, an ambitious expat architect and a disenchanted rich girl converge and collide as thousands of dead pigs float down the river towards a rapidly modernizing

Shanghai Shanghai (; , , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ) is one of the four direct-administered municipalities of the People's Republic of China (PRC). The city is located on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the Huangpu River flowin ...

, China.

Cast

as Candy Wang * Haoyu Yang as Old Wang *

as Wang Zhen * Meng Li as Xia Xia * David Rysdahl as Sean Landry *

Zazie Beetz Zazie Olivia Beetz ( ; ; born June 1, 1991) is a American actress. She stars in the FX comedy-drama series ''Atlanta'' (2016–22), for which she received a nomination for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy ...

as Angie * Archibald C. McColl IV as Phil Johnson

Production

The film was written and directed by

. It was inspired by the 2013 Huangpu River dead pigs incident. Yan said, "I was born close to Shanghai, and I used to be a reporter, so it just felt like the story I had to tell." The film was shot by Federico Cesca. Filming took place in Shanghai.

Release

The film had its world premiere in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition section at the

on January 19, 2018. It was released in China on January 25, 2019. The film was released worldwide on February 12, 2021 by

Reception

Critical reception

On review aggregator website

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

, the film holds an approval rating of based on reviews, and an average rating of . Its site consensus reads, "''Dead Pigs'' casts a sharp critical and satirical eye toward late-stage capitalism in China and the world beyond, establishing writer-director Cathy Yan as a filmmaker to watch." On

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...

, the film has a

weighted average The weighted arithmetic mean is similar to an ordinary arithmetic mean (the most common type of average), except that instead of each of the data points contributing equally to the final average, some data points contribute more than others. The ...

score of 72 out of 100 based on 9 reviews. Justin Lowe of ''

The Hollywood Reporter ''The Hollywood Reporter'' (''THR'') is an American digital and print magazine which focuses on the Hollywood film, television, and entertainment industries. It was founded in 1930 as a daily trade paper, and in 2010 switched to a weekly larg ...

'' described the film as "a dark, quirky comedy that peels back the layers of contemporary Mainland mores and reveals a group of people almost completely deracinated by their quest to get ahead in a society buffeted by rapidly shifting cultural expectations." Jessica Kiang of ''

Variety Variety may refer to: Arts and entertainment Entertainment formats * Variety (radio) * Variety show, in theater and television Films * ''Variety'' (1925 film), a German silent film directed by Ewald Andre Dupont * ''Variety'' (1935 film), ...

'' wrote, "Yan's film, with its dancing girls, pigeon-fancying beauticians, Westerners-on-the-make and spontaneous musical numbers, is an antidote to China's weightier arthouse output, settling the stomach after too much stolid social realism, effervescent as an alka-seltzer." Elizabeth Horkley of Mubi praised the verisimilitude of Yan's cast of characters, writing: ''"Dead Pigs,'' in its favoring of ordinary, human interactions over narrative pomp, leads to unexpected places that shouldn't be unexpected at all. Her characters behave like multifaceted humans, and the pleasure in watching Yan’s debut feature is akin to the feeling of meeting someone new who you think you're going to like."

Accolades

References

External links

* {{IMDb title, 7476810, Dead Pigs 2018 films Chinese-language films English-language Chinese films Shanghainese-language films Films directed by Cathy Yan 2018 multilingual films Chinese multilingual films American multilingual films 2010s English-language films