[PRINCE OF SWINE is now available on home video.]
Review by Matt Finley
The thing about controversy is that it
takes some amount of concerted effort, on the part of the public, to
generate and sustain. Apologies if this review seems lazy - I just
don’t want to risk fanning the few meager blazes that Mark Toma’s
PRINCE OF SWINE has managed to spark up between admirably
vigilant defenders of feminism and the smirking, priggish iconoclasts
who goad them.
Movies marketed on the merits of sheer
gloves-off un-PC-ness always send out the hot sodium stink of a
warning flare: gloating, showboating wreck of a film ahead. So it
goes with Toma’s budget-deprived and class-deficient comedic
stinker about gender politics and the dishonesty of feminism.
Part courtroom drama, part
anti-romantic comedy, SWINE is set in the dog-cannibalizing
pigsty of C-list Hollywood, where Julie (Nell Rutledge), an
idealistic lawyer, begs her new boss, Witt (Toma), to let her take on
a young actresses’ sexual harassment lawsuit against the
grotesque Farber (John Klementaski) - one of the most
influential and boorish television producers in the business.
The anti-romantic comedy aspect comes
from the relationship between Julie and her boss, as the young lawyer
repeatedly finds herself, against all better judgement, bedding her
cynical superior. Meanwhile, the courtroom scenes give Toma and his
character, Witt, plenty of space to wax polemic on the film’s
primary conceit: the myth of gender equality.
Through a series of on-screen couplings
and powerfully hammy dialogues, Toma lays out a half-broasted
argument that starts with the enduringly childish conceit that all a
feminist really needs is a thorough jackhammerin’, and ends with a
heartfelt plea (in faux-arty montage form) for a transparent, honest
world: Can’t we all just admit that women naturally use sex, and
the withholding thereof, to extract desired goods and services from
men... and that men instinctually seek power, a totemic masculine
currency that can be exchanged for sex? And, while we’re at
it,doesn't feminism – a manipulative, misdirected power grab
by the dishonest, the ugly and the naïve - just upset the balance by
creating undesirable chicks and frustrated and, ultimately,
emasculated, dudes?
In a back-handed gambit to ensure that
the audience doesn’t mistake his supposed gritty honesty for, you
know, actual blatant misogyny, Toma makes sure that Farber is as
despicable as possible, dishing out shot after shot of the supposed
entertainment magnate gleefully debasing aspiring actresses with
sexual commands borne on threats of physical violence. Less shocking
than they are yawningly gratuitous, the scenes only serve to
highlight Toma’s fixation on degrading women into a state of
willing humility.
The depth of this obsession is driven
streaking over the fence by Julie’s arc, which finds the
intrepid, headstrong feminist
having what’s presented as a near-holy epiphany as she
awakes from her apparently fantastical
ideals of justice and equality into Toma’s jaded,
bitter and sexually carnivorous
reality. Oh, the excessive use of the words “bitch” and
“whore” - particularly in a
courtroom setting - is also more than a little
revealing. (Also-also,
note the Tinsel Town setting
and nihilistic [read: cliché] portrayal of the entertainment
industry. Could it be that Toma’s
aggression toward women is a bit... displaced?)
Usually, I feel bad disparaging the
hard-striving efforts of a burgeoning cinematic artist working
outside the system. In this case, though, Toma not only cast himself
in the film, but also made sure that his fictional alter-ego cornered
the monopoly on sex scenes while simultaneously being unironically
named “Witt” (I can only imagine the other monikers he
considered... Klevar? Shmart?).
It always seems a little too
convenient when a first-time filmmaker just happens to have a
radically divisive opinion about low-hanging hot-button
socio-cultural fruit. Whether Toma actually believes in the
bloviating claptrap he’s hawking doesn’t really matter. What
matters is how well he presents it. And I gotta say: if PRINCE OF
SWINE really isn’t just a foot-stamping, throat-hoarsening plea
for attention, it’s a real shame – that’s about the only level
on which it works. (1 out 4 Stars)
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