Dogs Don’t Wear Pants

Thrilling Finnish fea­ture Dogs Don’t Wear Pants, from direc­tor J‑P Valkeapää, is a dra­ma about trau­ma and recov­er­ing from great loss, set in the world of BDSM. It also has plen­ti­ful body hor­ror, dead­pan dark humour and plot­ting beats rem­i­nis­cent of a roman­tic com­e­dy – think Sleep­less in Seat­tle, except instead of a meet-cute atop the Empire State Build­ing, Tom Han­ks’ wid­ow­er has just want­ed some­one to stran­gle him.

The film’s visu­al­ly arrest­ing pro­logue estab­lish­es pain of a non-phys­i­cal kind. Juha (Pekka Strang) los­es his wife through hor­ri­ble cir­cum­stances, as she drowns while entan­gled in a fish­ing net he’s left out in the water next to where they’re stay­ing. Unable to save her and near­ly per­ish­ing him­self, he’s forced to raise their young child alone. Cut to years lat­er and Juha’s pro­longed emo­tion­al paral­y­sis is use­ful for his job as a sur­geon, where blood and guts – as explic­it­ly shown – don’t both­er him, but is a prob­lem for devel­op­ing mean­ing­ful new relationships.

Now 16-year-old daugh­ter Elli (Ilona Huh­ta) tries to set him up with her music teacher, but the only sex­u­al sat­is­fac­tion Juha seems inter­est­ed in is a mas­tur­ba­tion rit­u­al involv­ing his late wife’s clothes and perfume.

He’s also numb to putting up any tra­di­tion­al parental resis­tance to Elli’s wish­es for a tongue pierc­ing. Accom­pa­ny­ing her to the pierc­ing par­lour, he wan­ders off dur­ing the ses­sion to find that the build­ing also hosts the lair of a pro­fes­sion­al dom­i­na­trix, Mona (Krista Koso­nen), who assaults him upon his intru­sion. With his thumb­nail smashed in and mid-suf­fo­ca­tion, Juha has an appar­ent out-of-
body reunion with his lost love, visu­alised as a naked swim in the water for­ev­er asso­ci­at­ed with her demise.

Beyond just the oth­er­world­ly emo­tion­al enlight­en­ment of this expe­ri­ence, Juha devel­ops a taste for BDSM, par­tic­u­lar­ly asphyx­i­a­tion. He enters into prop­er paid ses­sions with Mona: he is her ​‘dog’, with the film’s title com­ing from her demand that he strip off. Par­tak­ing in increas­ing­ly extreme acts and cer­e­monies as their engage­ments con­tin­ue, his search for pain and plea­sure leads to an unex­pect­ed bond between dog and mas­ter that
con­fus­es both parties.

Despite its afore­men­tioned dark com­e­dy and swerves into body hor­ror (that thumb wound does not get pret­ti­er), Dogs Don’t Wear Pants stands out as a rare fic­tion film to not sen­sa­tion­alise, pathol­o­gise or mock kink and those who par­tic­i­pate in such activ­i­ties. It is a sex-pos­i­tive nar­ra­tive through and through. There is authen­tic­i­ty in its pro­duc­tion and cos­tume design’s para­pher­na­lia, but also in what Valkeapää and cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Pietari Pel­to­la make their visu­al focus in the key scenes between Juha and Mona.

The strik­ing eyes and faces of Strang and, par­tic­u­lar­ly, Koso­nen are what the cam­era hones in on, rather than their respec­tive­ly nude or leather-clad bod­ies. It’s all about con­vey­ing the empa­thet­ic nature that’s vital to this psy­cho­log­i­cal expe­ri­ence between the char­ac­ters, where­by the elab­o­rate cos­tumes, set­tings and, well, flu­ids are just there to make the fan­ta­sy – which the film goes some way to nor­mal­is­ing – more tan­gi­ble. A gen­uine­ly touch­ing final sequence only strength­ens the por­trait of find­ing hope through the hellish.

Dogs Don’t Wear Pants is released 20 March via Cur­zon Home Cin­e­ma, with oth­er VOD plat­forms to follow.