The Hour of the Pig

A 1993 film, released in the United States as The Advocate, starring Colin Firth, Ian Holm, Donald Pleasence, Amina Annabi and Nicol Williamson. Much of its plot is based on real historical trials of animals in late medieval France. See here for one source.

Maître Richard Courtois (Firth), a lawyer, has left Paris with his clerk Mathieu, traveling to Abbeville in Ponthieu, an independent region in modern northern France, for what they believe will be a quiet, rural existence. However, the first thing they witness on arriving in the town is a man condemned for bestiality about to be hanged at the side of the donkey he sodomized. At the last time, a pardon is given due to a mass petition from the villagers-for the donkey, who is deemed innocent. After this strange arrival, Courtois quickly takes up many backlogged cases. His first is defending a farmer accused of killing his wife's lover. Courtois gets him acquitted, at which the farmer says he should have killed the man years ago, and pledges to help Courtois in any way he can.

A boy is found killed in town, which becomes the focus of the main plot later. Next, Courtois defends a woman named Jeannine accused of witchcraft, after protesting her judicial torture and making friends with a cheerfully corrupt parish priest (Holm) who doubts the reality of witchcraft, prescribing it rather to hallucinations. Courtois requests that rats be summoned to court so they can testify that she did not order them to infect her neighbor; when the rats fail to appear this charge is dismissed. Courtois overlooks a difference between French and Ponthieu law, however, so Jeannine is sentenced to be hanged anyway. While she is led away, Jeannine says "There is darkness all about you, you can bring the light. Look to the boy, Maître. Look to the boy." Before she is hanged, Jeannine says she will not curse but bless them, prophesying to the villagers that a fine Knight will come to deliver them from their lies and evil. Courtois also engages in a sexual encounter with the maid in the inn he is staying at that seemingly comes out of nowhere.

He encounters the case of the murdered boy, who is Jewish, after a pig is charged as the killer and its owners, a group of Moors passing through, appeal for him to defend it. Courtois declines, even when Samira (Annabi), a beautiful dancer, offers him her body as payment, which he refuses. In return, he offers her enough money to buy two pigs, but Samira rejects this. Courtois now takes up the case, and quickly learns there is more to the death of the boy that initially appears. Jehan d'Auferre (Williamson), Seigneur of Abbeville, seeks to influence Courtois into dropping the matter, subtly offering him money or the hand of his daughter. Both his daughter and son are eccentric to the point of being insane. The son in particular, showing traits of what would now be called sociopathy, as his main pastime seems to be torturing birds. D'Auffrey also reveals that his ancestors were Cathars, a Gnostic Christian sect condemned as heresy and destroyed by the Roman Catholics. There are hints the region of Ponthieu was once home to many Gnostics, though what this has to do with anything remains unclear. Courtois engages in a relationship with Samira that soon is the talk of the town. D'Auferre exercises his feudal right to preside as judge at the trial of the pig, using knowledge of this against Courtois, warning him to let it be put to death.

The case seems to be over, but then the Advent festival begins and trial is adjourned. The aged public prosecutor Pincheone (Pleasence) reveals that he moved from Paris just like Courtois for an opportunity to stand out that was not possible there, but he urges him to go back and not waste a career among superstitious peasants. Despite this, Courtois begins to have a house built. While laying the foundation, however, the body of another Jewish boy killed a year earlier is uncovered. Courtois begins to suspect that a human killer was responsible, and the pig has been falsely accused. He discovers the Seigneur is part of a secret society, but it is not engaged in the occult, but rather price-fixing. At a Christmas Day banquet held by the Seigneur, Courtois narrowly rescues Samira from arrest when she pulls a knife on the Seigneur's son, who poured wine on her blouse. On that same night, he rescues a boy from a masked man on horseback with an axe. The film then builds to a strong conclusion.

The film contains examples of the following tropes:

 * Cloudcuckoolander: Both the Seigneur's children qualify, though his son is also The Sociopath.
 * Coitus Ensues: Courtois' encounter with the maid at the inn apparently comes out of nowhere.
 * Erotic Dream: Courtois has one of Samira just before he gets woken up by the maid, who sees how "happy" it made him, and...CoitusEnsues.
 * Foreshadowing: Jeannine's prophecy.
 * Frame-Up: The pig, unsurprisingly.
 * Kangaroo Court: The Ponthieu court has strong elements of this with its animal and witchcraft trials, though this is all Truth in Television.
 * Off on a Technicality: Inverted terribly. Jeannine, accused of witchcraft, gets convicted due to an aspect of Ponthieu law Courtois didn't know about.
 * Prophecy Twist: Jeannine's prophecy from the gallows that a fine knight will come to deliver the people of Abbeville from their lies and evil.
 * Serial Killer:.
 * The Sociopath: The Seigneur's son, who is sent away to England to be "treated".