Watching this film recently, for the first time since I originally saw it in the cinema, it came as something of a shock to realise that it is now nearly a quarter of a century since it first appeared. It looks very dated today, but what dates it is not the clothes and hairstyles on display. Those don't seem to have changed much since 1992, certainly not as much as they would have changed during the quarter-century between 1967 and 1992. What dates it is its technology. It takes us back to a world of Filofaxes, of Ford Fiestas, of floppy disks and of mobile phones the size of a housebrick.
The title character, Leon Geller, is a Jewish estate agent from North London who discovers that due to a mistake in an artificial insemination clinic his real father is actually Brian Chadwick, a Gentile pig farmer from Yorkshire. Leon travels north to meet his new-found family and while staying on the farm manages (thanks to another artificial insemination cock-up) to cross-breed a pig with a sheep. Cue much debate about whether the resulting creature would be kosher and whether it could be used to produce Jewish bacon.
Watching the film again, I still couldn't really see what the point of it is. I wondered if you need to be Jewish- I am not- to appreciate it. Are the characters of Leon's parents Sidney and Judith (neurotic, forever complaining and always badgering their son to get married) and of Leon himself (neurotic, angst-ridden, guilt-ridden) meant as sharp social commentary or merely as ironic stereotypes? Are Jews really all haunted by some vague sense of existential guilt? (Leon blames all his neuroses on his Jewish background). Do you need to be well-versed in Jewish theology to make any sense of all that bickering between the Orthodox and Reform Rabbis? Or to care whether the dietary laws would permit you to eat meat from a sheep-pig hybrid in the scientifically improbable event of such a creature ever being produced? (We never get to see what this unlikely beast looks like- doubtless the budget was too limited for the necessary special effects).
Few of the characters are anything other than one-dimensional, although Mark Frankel does enough to suggest that there may be more than one dimension to Leon. (Frankel's tragic death in a road accident in 1996 was a sad loss to the British acting profession). Overall, however, "Leon the Pig Farmer" is little more than a thin, and sometimes baffling, little comedy. 5/10
The title character, Leon Geller, is a Jewish estate agent from North London who discovers that due to a mistake in an artificial insemination clinic his real father is actually Brian Chadwick, a Gentile pig farmer from Yorkshire. Leon travels north to meet his new-found family and while staying on the farm manages (thanks to another artificial insemination cock-up) to cross-breed a pig with a sheep. Cue much debate about whether the resulting creature would be kosher and whether it could be used to produce Jewish bacon.
Watching the film again, I still couldn't really see what the point of it is. I wondered if you need to be Jewish- I am not- to appreciate it. Are the characters of Leon's parents Sidney and Judith (neurotic, forever complaining and always badgering their son to get married) and of Leon himself (neurotic, angst-ridden, guilt-ridden) meant as sharp social commentary or merely as ironic stereotypes? Are Jews really all haunted by some vague sense of existential guilt? (Leon blames all his neuroses on his Jewish background). Do you need to be well-versed in Jewish theology to make any sense of all that bickering between the Orthodox and Reform Rabbis? Or to care whether the dietary laws would permit you to eat meat from a sheep-pig hybrid in the scientifically improbable event of such a creature ever being produced? (We never get to see what this unlikely beast looks like- doubtless the budget was too limited for the necessary special effects).
Few of the characters are anything other than one-dimensional, although Mark Frankel does enough to suggest that there may be more than one dimension to Leon. (Frankel's tragic death in a road accident in 1996 was a sad loss to the British acting profession). Overall, however, "Leon the Pig Farmer" is little more than a thin, and sometimes baffling, little comedy. 5/10