Piggy (2022)

“Sara” (Laura Galán) usually spends most of her time helping out in her dad’s butchers shop; being shunned or downright bullied by her schoolmates for being large and getting precious little sympathy from her over-bearing mother (Carmen Machi). Things come to an head when three of her friends resort to terrifying and embarrassing her whilst she is swimming in the lake and then stealing her clothes. As she is running home, she encounters a van with a most mysterious couple of passengers - one of whom, shall we say, is a bit less willing to be in the van than the other! Next thing, there is a police investigation into a missing person and then her tormentors disappear too! With the community becoming frantic, people are levelling accusations left, right and centre and the question is - what does Sara know? This is a savage indictment of bullying in many of it’s guises and Galán delivers quite engagingly, but that angry and penetrating drama rather peters out after quite an emotionally odious start before turning into something a bit predictable and disappointing. If only it’s auteur Carlota Pereda had had the nerve to stick with her original, more innovative and characterful thrust then this could have presented a much better and altogether messier and more satisfying conclusion. It’s watchable, and sometimes quite uncomfortable at that, but it’s not quite what it could have been.