From the director of Snowpiercer comes this intriguing new Netflix-only film, Okja, about corporate waste, monsters, and other stories. Via the Guardian:
An Seo-hyun gives an outstanding performance as 13-year-old Mija, who has grown up with no parents, looked after by kindly grandpa Heebong, played by Byun Heebong (who was in The Host and also Bong’s 2003 film Memories of Murder). Her only friend and companion is Okja, the giant pig leased to them by flinty-hearted food tech CEO Lucy Mirando, played by Tilda Swinton. Okja’s ultimate destiny is to be taken away from them, poked and prodded by Mirando’s scientists, displayed to the media as an example of next-level meat production, paraded with the firm’s grotesque celebrity TV vet Dr Johnny Wilcox (Jake Gyllenhaal) and then finally eaten.
But poor Mija has grown up not quite grasping that, and soon Heebong will have to break it to her that Okja must go, and it’s going to be like leading Baloo away from Mowgli and sending him to the abattoir. But a crew of animal rights activists, led by the inscrutable Jay (Paul Dano), have other ideas.
Admittedly, Jake Gyllenhaal’s performance as the gurning Dr Wilcox is pretty broad and so is Swinton’s own performance at the very beginning. But her presence in the film deepens and intensifies as time goes on, showing us new perspectives of family anxiety and she is a marvellously watchable villain, wincing and scowling with self-pity and fear.