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DOG DAYS Send This Review to a Friend
Shown at the 2002 New Directors/New Films series in New York and only now in release, "Dog Days" is director Ulrich Seidl's unsettling film from Austria. It is summertime and a merciless look at assorted lives reveals how messed up so many are in Seidl's vision (co-scripted with Veronika Franz) of people in his home country. Outwardly folks seem to be leading conventional lives in conventional housing complexes. But behind the scenes--oh brother!
A young one-time beauty queen is subjected to repeated brutality by her boyfriends. A man and woman, although divorced, still live together and separately visit the place where their child was killed.
A teacher gets involved with two men in an episode that sparks violence. A paunchy, aging widower gets his plain-looking housekeeper to put on his late wife's clothes, dance teasingly for him and have sex.
A crazy, compulsive woman hitchhikes and drives whomever she meets batty with her incessant recitation of assorted top ten lists about life. And so on. A nasty mood permeates the very cynical film, which for that very reason manages to be entertaining in its observations and attitudes.
"Dog Days" is not a particularly pleasant film, but it is an accomplished one with effective acting, and it opens a window on a bizarre world from the perspective of the director and screenwriter. It's hardly a travel plug for Austria.
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