By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 2.5 cats
Director: Matteo Garone
Starring: Adamo Dionisi | Edoardo Pesce | Francesco Acquaroli | Marcello Fonte | Nunzia Schiano
Country: france, italy
Year: 2019
Running time: 103
IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6768578/reference
Brett says: “GOMORRAH director Matteo Garone offers his latest film in another atmospheric urban wilderness with a sympathetic dog groomer named Marcello as the driving force of the film. In this work, this small, frail man earns the audience’s trust and concern with his extreme love for the dogs that he services. On top of that, despite a break from his ex-wife, his attachment to his daughter builds another bond between viewer and character. Despite this, Marcello is a terribly flawed man who cannot shake his affiliation with drug trafficking in order to make ends meet. This associates him with questionable characters, most of all the brutish villain Simon, who complicate Marcello’s life in ways that make the viewer beg him to quit all of these affiliations and earn an honest living. Yet, these connections have such a stranglehold on the type of person he identifies as that it adds to the sympathy Garone has created for the character. No matter how badly we–or even Marcello–may want to quit these connections, it eventually take on a feel of a bad dream, featuring an embankment that we’ve dug for ourselves and now cannot quite ever climb up. The film services equally the tension built from the plot of Marcello’s double life and from the characterization itself. The film’s ending is the perfect icing on the cake for the almost surreal-at-times setting and for the set of circumstances that keep mounting throughout the plot.”
Thom says: “I saw DOGMAN today & while there is quite a lot of violence it’s not directed at our canine friends. The film didn’t make a hell of a lot of sense and the entire town that Dogman lived in seemed either disturbed or addled. 2.5 CATS not a fun watch