I only found out afterwards that director Cathy Yan had directed the DC blockbuster Birds of Prey, which i honestly couldn’t give much less of a fuck about - i simply have zero interest in contemporary superhero blockbuster fare. Her debut feature Dead Pigs, however, i found a lot to enjoy about. I have no clue know how much freedom chinese filmmakers have at this point in terms of political expression, yet this film - constantly riding the line between drama and pitch black satire - delivers tons of scathing criticism of late stage capitalism. Pretty much all characters in this are portrayed as pathetic grifters, the major difference being that some of them are favored by capitalist society while others aren’t. It’s a bit like Toshiro Mifune’s third wall breaking monologue in The Seven Samurai applied to a modern society. Yes, everyone is awful - now let me show you how they all got there…