A crazy road-trip on the animal condition

A preposterous story that raises gigantic questions! The Girl with the Heart of a Pig, series written by David André and Alice Vial in 8×26 minutes available on France.tv Slash, narrates the hectic run of two teenagers ready to do anything to save a sow from death. A crazy road-trip that raises the question of the living conditions of animals intended for our food.

“We wanted to treat a bit of a blind spot in fiction, which is the proper place of the industrial animal, produced for food,” says David André, who 20 minutes met at the La Rochelle TV Fiction Festival.

A heroine who carries these questions in her flesh

It all begins when Nina (Héloïse Volle), a teenager with heart disease and the daughter of a supermarket boss, learns that she has always lived thanks to a pig valve transplanted into her heart. “We quickly had the idea that one of the characters feels these questions in his flesh. I remembered that there were stories of pig organ transplants… So we imagined this young girl who wears a pig valve, and who, following this revelation, wonders about the fate of this animal that saved his life”, continues the screenwriter, who also directs the series.

For its co-screenwriter, Alice Vial, Nina, this Pig-Hearted Girl carries “a strong dilemma. The pig valve embodies the ultimate sacrifice: a pig died to save her. It is a very beautiful metaphor for all these sacrificed animals. She carries that in her flesh. By going to an industrial pigsty, Nina soon realizes how badly the animals that support us are rewarded in exchange.

A story à la Montaigu and Capulet

Hugo (Victor Bonnel, seen in particular in The World of Tomorrow), geek and son of pig breeders, is in love with Nina. When he learns that she wants to save the life of Fleur, a sow destined for slaughter, Hugo does not hesitate and embarks with her, the authorities on their heels, to save the life of this innocent pig.

“We grafted onto this a sort of story à la Montague and Capulet”, adds the screenwriter. Between Hugo’s parents, pig breeders, and Nina’s father, a hypermarket owner, there is a permanent showdown.

“I worked from publications by sociologists who are interested in pig farmers, who carry the idea that they are as much the victims of the chain of food capitalism as the poor pigs”, explains David André. Hugo’s parents are not “mean or bad people, but crushed by the system” of mass distribution.

An animal close to us which imposes itself on the set

“I was passionate about the pig and I became an expert,” laughs David André, who consulted historians, ethologists, a documentary filmmaker to better understand his subject. “We watched a lot of videos that we wish we hadn’t seen,” adds Alice Vial.

“The place of this animal, so sensitive, so intelligent, so close to us, raises questions. His place is probably the reason why he pays so much for his condition, ”said David André. “We often call the pig dripping or dirty because we don’t want to see what’s behind it,” adds Alice Vial.

Shooting with pigs is no small feat. On the set, the animal imposed its “tempo”, “when we wonder about the right place of the animal, there, we have an animal which imposes its place on the set”, laughs the director. For their part, Héloïse Volle and Victor Bonnel “bottle-fed them at the start”.

A satire that raises many questions

During their improbable run with Fleur, the sow, in Thelma and LouiseNina and Hugo will meet a whole gallery of incredible characters, Franky the Belgian (the excellent Denis Mpunga), a mobster ready to do anything to get rich thanks to low cost breeding from Eastern Europe, a policeman who doesn’t give up, or even his supercharged superior…

“There was the desire to make it a tale, which allows itself to swerve with moments of burlesque and dreamlike, and not to be in hyperrealism like certain thrillers on ecology”, confides Alice Vial. “Everything is slightly strange”, abounds David André.

This black comedy with chiseled dialogues, which borrows the codes of tragicomic fable, road-movie, teen-drama and burlesque, never sinks into didacticism.

However, we do not come out unscathed from the eight episodes which confront Nina with the limits of her convictions. “There is no reason for food animals to be mistreated. Although many farmers don’t abuse animals and many people do it very well, industrial feeding has a lot at stake. If we say that meat should be banned, as the animalists say, we will have artificial meat produced in Silicon Valley. Do we really want countryside without sheep, without cows and without pigs? asks David André.

Should we give up eating meat? Abolish livestock? Is there a third way? These are the questions posed by this Romeo and Juliet porcine.