When Pigs Fly (1993)
After watching
Sleepwalk last week and really liking it, I was disappointed to learn that the director, Sara Driver, only made two feature films. I was, however, happy to learn that her other feature,
When Pigs Fly was available on the Criterion Channel.
The story in
When Pigs Fly is much more grounded than the one in
Sleepwalk, though it's still a fantastical tale.
A loser-ish musician named Marty (Alfred Molina) rolls out of bed at noon and struggles not to fall asleep as he sits through a painful piano lesson with a child. Meanwhile, a woman named Sheila is ordered by her boss to clean out an old shed behind the bar where they work. Sheila decides to give an old rocking chair that she finds there to Marty as a gift. Marty very soon discovers that the chair is haunted by the ghosts of a little girl and a woman he knew from many years before.
The film moves in three very distinct acts: first Marty discovering the ghosts, then Marty and the ghosts learning to co-exist and drawing Sheila into it, and then finally the group confronting the harsh reality behind the death of one of the ghosts. The spirit of the film is for the most part very light, but it also doesn't shy away from some disturbing implications.
On the whole I really liked this movie. Sometimes I find myself using words to describe a film that seem like they should be an insult.
When Pigs Fly is slightly meandering and, until the final act, very subdued given the content. But I enjoyed these aspects of it. There's something really enjoyable about the "hang out" vibe that goes along with many of the sequences between Marty and the ghosts. The child who plays the ghost maybe isn't the best actress, but she has great chemistry with Molina and especially with Marianne Faithfull who plays the adult ghost. These ghosts have been stuck with their chair for years and years. It makes sense that they don't have a sense of urgency, and yet it's fun to watch them advocate for their own quality of life (they can't stray far from the chair, and so they are unhappy when Marty first stores the chair in a basement with no view to the outside world).
Given the light tone of the film as a whole, I appreciated that tit didn't try to make certain elements too cutesy. There's an important subplot involving domestic abuse and Driver uses an effective, scant handful of lines of dialogue and imagery to convey the seriousness of the situation without significantly impacting the overall vibe of the movie. It's a fine line to walk, and I felt it was pulled off well.
This one's kind of a sleeper. I can see why it's not well known, and it's not the kind of film that necessarily makes you want to run out and force all of your friends to watch it. But much like
Sleepwalker I think that it deserves to be better seen (a scant 180 ratings on IMDb). If you come across this one (and especially if you have the Criterion Channel) I strongly recommend it. It put a smile on my face and achieved a rare enjoyable whimsy.