Dogman | Little White Lies

Dog­man

18 Oct 2018 / Released: 19 Oct 2018

A person walking two dogs on a wet, muddy beach with a white wooden fence in the background.
A person walking two dogs on a wet, muddy beach with a white wooden fence in the background.
4

Anticipation.

Matteo Garrone returns to the crime-stained streets of southern Italy.

3

Enjoyment.

Cracking central performance aside, there’s not a great deal to get excited about here.

2

In Retrospect.

This social realist parable lacks bite.

A diminu­tive dog groomer comes a crop­per in this dour crime fable from Ital­ian direc­tor Mat­teo Garrone.

Dogs of all shapes and sizes fea­ture in Mat­teo Garrone’s ninth fea­ture, which sees the Ital­ian film­mak­er return to his social real­ist roots with a low-key crime dra­ma that calls to mind his Cannes Grand Jury Prize win­ner from 2008, Gomor­rah. Man’s best friend is not the pri­ma­ry focus here though – as per the title, the film chron­i­cles the life of a gen­tle dog groomer named Mar­cel­lo (Mar­cel­lo Fonte) who runs a small shop in a rough neigh­bour­hood on the out­skirts of Napoli.

Giv­en the authen­ti­cal­ly grit­ty set­ting, where every man, woman and pup is seem­ing­ly on the take, it’s unsur­pris­ing to learn that Mar­cel­lo sells cocaine on the side to help pay for reg­u­lar scu­ba div­ing trips with his young daugh­ter, Sofia (Ali­da Bal­dari Cal­abria). Soon, how­ev­er, Marcello’s illic­it deal­ings see him become mixed up with a hot­head­ed local brute named Simone (Edoar­do Pesce) who’s quick to take advan­tage of Marcello’s pas­sive nature and diminu­tive stature.

Marcello’s unwa­ver­ing kind­ness towards ani­mals (in one scene he returns to the scene of a bur­glary to res­cue a chi­huahua, which one of the rob­bers has left to die in a freez­er) makes him an instant­ly endear­ing fig­ure, and although cen­tring such a bleak sto­ry around a benign char­ac­ter could be viewed as a cheap, slight­ly cyn­i­cal ploy from Gar­rone, the film ben­e­fits great­ly from the lighter moments where Mar­cel­lo is shown wash­ing, walk­ing and gen­er­al­ly mak­ing a fuss over the var­i­ous pooches in his care. Still, watch­ing this big-heart­ed lit­tle man being con­stant­ly kicked around like a stray mutt makes for uncom­fort­able viewing.

Dog­man is pitched as an urban west­ern”, and Nico­lai Brüel’s dirt-smudged cin­e­matog­ra­phy cer­tain­ly adds a lay­er of grime and gloom to pro­ceed­ings. Yet while the film is com­pelling enough as an unsen­ti­men­tal por­trait of social decay in down­trod­den south­ern Italy, it lacks the the­mat­ic mus­cu­lar­i­ty and vis­cer­al jolt of Garrone’s ear­li­er work, in par­tic­u­lar the explo­sive Gomor­rah and 2002’s The Embalmer, about a mid­dle-aged Neapoli­tan taxidermist.

In the neo­re­al­ist tra­di­tion of Luchi­no Vis­con­ti, Rober­to Rosselli­ni and espe­cial­ly Vit­to­rio De Sica, Garrone’s pro­tag­o­nists tend to be ordi­nary peo­ple pit­ted against oppres­sive indi­vid­u­als, fac­tions or larg­er sys­temic forces. Their dai­ly strug­gles are typ­i­cal­ly depict­ed as being symp­to­matic of com­plex sociopo­lit­i­cal issues beyond their con­trol. To that end, Dog­man feels strange­ly unleashed from real­i­ty, the direc­tor dis­play­ing a basic unwill­ing­ness to devel­op both the cen­tral char­ac­ters and nar­ra­tive, instead dri­ving home the tedious dog-eat-dog metaphor that forms the basis of this unre­lent­ing­ly dour fable.

Gar­rone clear­ly knows how to con­struct taut alle­gor­i­cal thrillers on this scale, but fol­low­ing his ambi­tious, dark­ly com­ic pre­vi­ous fea­tures (Real­i­ty from 2012 and Tale of Tales from 2015) this feels like a com­par­a­tive­ly minor work. Marcello’s sym­pa­thet­ic putz schtick real­ly does wear thin after a while (although Fonte works won­ders with the mate­r­i­al), and there’s a sense of shrug­ging inevitabil­i­ty about the sym­bol­ic act of ret­ri­bu­tion that clos­es out the film.

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