Review of Pigsty

Pigsty (1969)
Definitely NOT the Pasolini to begin with...
17 June 2007
It's arguably his least accessible work.And probably his more boring too.Like in "Oedipe" ,or in "teorema" ,there is a mix of contemporary scenes and a tale of long ago ,which could happen anywhere ,in the Middle Ages or the antiquity -which Pasolini broached with his Gospel,Medea and Oedipe-.

"Porcile" bears the appropriate scars of the time .All the scenes between Jean-Pierre Léaud (fortunately,he is dubbed ,so the French -speaking do not have to hear his affected voice)and Anne Wiazemsky are terribly stodgy.The two "intellectual" "actors" epitomize ,as far as I'm concerned,the nadir of French acting.These interminable dialogs recall the dreadful rhetoric of GOdard's "La Chinoise" .

Things go better when Pasolini directs the fathers: one of them,a former Nazi has A skeleton in the closet and the other one's son is a zoophilist (check the title).As for the Pierre Clementi sequences -in an undefined past,which deal with cannibalism (I killed my father/I eat human flesh),the connection with the main plot escapes me,I fear.

A young person who wants to discover Pasolini should not begin with "Porcile" (or ,worse "Salo" )."Mamma Roma" "Il vangelo secondo Matteo" or "Medea" are wiser choices.
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