Pig (Michael Sarnoski, 2021) (Patreon)

Pig is an auspicious debut film, to put it mildly. First-timer Michael Sarnoski displays a remarkable control over tone and ambiance, which is all too rare in independent English-language films these days. But what's more impressive is that he uses that control to navigate his extremely strange, highly literary screenplay through very treacherous waters. This is a film that is continually in danger of lapsing into either self-importance or out-and-out ridiculousness, and Sarnoski manages to come right up to the breaking point of these infelicitous outcomes in order to keep the viewer in a state of tense near-disbelief.

After all, at its core this is a love story between a man and his pig. Chef-turned-truffle-hunter Robin Feld (Nicolas Cage) is quite direct about the limits of the relationship, telling his associate Amir (Alex Wolff) that "I don't fuck the pig." But that pig (Brandi) is simultaneously symbolic and absolutely literal. One of the things Pig seems to understand is that the bond between humans and pets is so strong because its simplicity. After years of unprocessed grief and anguish, the pig is a safe repository for Rob's most basic emotions, ones he doesn't dare invest anywhere else.

And if there is a common denominator in the world of Pig, it is an all-encompassing grief that is uniquely difficult for men (at least of a certain generation) to countenance. While Rob chose to drop out and become a hermit subsisting in the woods, Amir adopts a slick, fake-it-til-you-make-it exterior that does, at times, lapse into parody. (His bright yellow Camero is more than sufficient to tell his tale. His Gucci belt buckle is a bit over the line.) He thinks that by making something of himself, he can both win his father's approval and get out from under the old man. But his dad, restaurant impresario / upper-crust thug Darius (Adam Arkin) can be moved only by Rob, who understands the man as his opposite number. Where Rob relinquished everything, Darius turned money and control into an addiction.

Just as the pig is both literal and figurative, Sarnoski's depiction of a criminal culinary underworld -- actually stationed beneath Portland's new-money developments -- is probably Pig's boldest maneuver. We are probably not supposed to believe that there is a haute cuisine  fight club lurking in the ruins of a gentrified city square. But Sarnoski (who must have worked in the restaurant industry at some point) chooses to concretize both the high-intensity machismo that defines the hierarchy in high-ticket dining and the stratification of new, old, and no money. Edgar (Darius Pierce), who seems to be some sort of food truck mafioso, tells Rob that he's nobody now. But as we keep discovering, the past hasn't really gone anywhere. Unlike the hucksters and hustlers, Rob laid a real foundation that was built to last. 

FINAL THOUGHT: Why the hell wasn’t this in ND/NF?!