Dogman. (15.)
Directed by Matteo Garrone.
Starring Marcello Fonte, Edoardo Pesce, Nunzia Schiano, Adamo Dionisi, Francesco Acquaroli and Alida Baldari Calabria. Italian with subtitles. 103 mins.
Dogman's star roles are two figures who would usually be in support. Marcello (Fonte) is a weedy, Corporal Klinger-from-MASH lookalike who runs a little dog grooming business on a rundown seafront facade. Along with the other small business owners they are bullied and tormented but the thug Simone (Pesce) a hulking piggy-eyed brute who in any well-ordered narrative would never rise above the rank of goon, the lug hired to stand beside the real villain as backup menace.
The film opens with Marcello dealing cautiously and at arms lengths with a snarling, vicious pug. Mixed in with his cowardice and lack of physical presence, the root of his problems is a faith that any animal can be trained. The film is beautifully put together, with fine performances and an almost indecently acute sense of place. It's hardly a feast for the eyes (unlike Garrone's previous film Tale of Tales) but I doubt you'll see a better-photographed film this year. The offseason seafront vista and misty apartment blocks are shot in a way that is lifelike and yet sumptuous. The nature of Marcello's increasingly pathetic subservience to Simone – outside of the obvious fact of him being much bigger and much more violent than him – is never quite made clear and halfway through, the story has him do something that seems to take it too far.
In a sense it's a fine black comedy, though in the not funny at all sense. Garrone exposed the mafia in Gomorrah and here he shows how Italy is stuck in corruption.
Directed by Matteo Garrone.
Starring Marcello Fonte, Edoardo Pesce, Nunzia Schiano, Adamo Dionisi, Francesco Acquaroli and Alida Baldari Calabria. Italian with subtitles. 103 mins.
Dogman's star roles are two figures who would usually be in support. Marcello (Fonte) is a weedy, Corporal Klinger-from-MASH lookalike who runs a little dog grooming business on a rundown seafront facade. Along with the other small business owners they are bullied and tormented but the thug Simone (Pesce) a hulking piggy-eyed brute who in any well-ordered narrative would never rise above the rank of goon, the lug hired to stand beside the real villain as backup menace.
The film opens with Marcello dealing cautiously and at arms lengths with a snarling, vicious pug. Mixed in with his cowardice and lack of physical presence, the root of his problems is a faith that any animal can be trained. The film is beautifully put together, with fine performances and an almost indecently acute sense of place. It's hardly a feast for the eyes (unlike Garrone's previous film Tale of Tales) but I doubt you'll see a better-photographed film this year. The offseason seafront vista and misty apartment blocks are shot in a way that is lifelike and yet sumptuous. The nature of Marcello's increasingly pathetic subservience to Simone – outside of the obvious fact of him being much bigger and much more violent than him – is never quite made clear and halfway through, the story has him do something that seems to take it too far.
In a sense it's a fine black comedy, though in the not funny at all sense. Garrone exposed the mafia in Gomorrah and here he shows how Italy is stuck in corruption.
