Belgrade International Film Festival
         
 
 
   

"Disco Pigs" by Kirsten Sheridan [Irish Film]

At first, ?Disco Pigs? seems like a fairytale. A boy and girl, born at the same time, growing up together, living together. Then, reality bites, and perfect love is spoiled by reality. The parents of both are separated and single. Again, it looks like a perfect solution for both, the boy and girl living next to each other all their life, keeping each other company.

But as years go by, the boy's father becomes violent and abusive to the girl next door. Does she belong to the "enemy"? So, the next-door sweethearts, to protect each other, create an unhealthy relationship, resulting in the boy turning to violent and dangerous behaviour.

After high school, the parents decide to separate the boy from the girl, sending the girl to another school, in another town. The boy, unable to stand being separated from the girl, comes to visit her in school, finding her interested in another boy. In a raging jealousy, he commits murder. The boy is weak in this unhealthy relationship; he refuses to grow up and let go of her. He goes insane because of the obsession that can hardly be called love.

It is not clear in this film: are the boy and girl twins from the same parents, or they are just next-door neighbors? It could be both. It seems the director wanted the question of their true relationship to lie beneath the surface, creating a sick feeling beneath this connection of two lonely souls.

Both actors playing the main characters put in a great effort to make this story seem real. The film director, Kirsten Sheridan, instead of striving for a commercial film or for trying to create a School of Irish Film, focuses on the emotional relationship between the boy and the girl. She leaves no space for additional and irrelevant characters, giving this film an incredible visual style. The plain simplicity of the memory pictures in the boy's minds, characterised by their narration, is the perfect solution.

 

 


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