Prolific French writer, director and producer Luc Besson returns to the big screen with Dogman, a highly watchable concoction stuffed with emotion and its own brand of suspenseful action.
Already dubbed his “comeback” film, it offers the audience an entertaining, offbeat character study of a deeply hurt man who isolates himself from human beings and surrounds himself with loyal, loving dogs who do his bidding, even killing for him. It is hard not to feel there are autobiographical elements underlying parts of the film, which Besson wrote before he was acquitted in June of rape allegations brought by an actress in 2018.
Fans of this imaginative director will find plenty to enjoy – the resilience and humanity of Douglas (a.k.a. Dogman), his fondness for make-up and his splendid drag impersonations, from Piaf to Monroe; his incredible dogs, his lack of self-pity, and his underlying ruthlessness in defending himself and his canines (“my babies”). Filling this hunky central role with charm and wit is Caleb Landry Jones, who played the ad salesman in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, and who gets a chance to let his talent really shine. His performance, taking in all the complexity of the character’s split personalities, flashes on Michael Keaton in Birdman, and will no doubt be remembered when the Venice jury deliberates this competition entry.
But while Dogman effortlessly stirs up pathos, it lacks the literary and theatrical layers that won González Iñárritu’s black comedy four Academy Awards including Best Picture. Dogman is not a comedy at all, but a casual mix of atmospheres ranging from American Gothic (his nightmare childhood) to TV police shows (he recounts the story of his life to prison psychologist Dr. Evelyn Decker, played by a wisely low-key Jojo T. Gibbs from Past Lives).
Scene: a highway accident, surrounded by flashing police lights and cops talking to each other on their radios. Someone who looks like a blonde woman in a frilly pink dress is bleeding behind the wheel of a stopped truck. When the police open the back, dozens of dogs of all races and breeds jump out and take off running.
Now that he has the audience’s attention, Besson the screenwriter has only to explain the hows and whys leading up to this key moment. Enter Dr. Evelyn Decker, a divorced mom whose husband is in rehab and not observing a court order to keep his distance from her and their son. She has been called in to take the measure of the strange driver, who is none other than a bloody Douglas in drag. And he’s delighted to open up – one feels it may be the first time anyone has asked him to talk about himself.
His grew up on a farm in the rural U.S., where his violent dad raised dogs for dogfights. Pathological cruelty is also a dominant trait in his brother, who spurs their father to lock Douglas up, permanently, in the dog cage. Mom hightails it out of town before Dad shoots his finger off and paralyzes the boy for life with a bullet in the spine. The rescue scene, with involves a small terrier, is macabre but so unrealistic it should be the first of many delights for canine lovers.
Now free but confined to a wheelchair, Douglas is passed from shelter to shelter, friendless, until he meets Salma (Grace Palma), a beautiful girl with a big smile, who introduces him to Shakespeare and stage acting. No attempt is made to make this happy interval in his sad life even remotely plausible and it remains a weak and superfluous bit of fantasizing. The score by Eric Serra, who has been a trusted collaborator of Besson’s since La Femme Nikita and The Fifth Element, is laid on thickly here and elsewhere.
When Salma moves away, it leaves the boy lonelier than before; there is even a suggestion that it pushes him over the edge. Forced by the city (we are somewhere in New Jersey) to move his dog pound, Douglas finds a job performing as a drag queen in a theater, and he is simply sensational. D.P. Colin Wandersman hits his face with a harsh white light that turns an Edith Piaf song (which the bewigged Douglas belts out in French, much to everyone’s surprise) into sheer magic.
Later sequences are darker as violence begins to take center stage. Douglas is now living in an abandoned high school full of labyrinthine cement corridors where the dogs roam freely. He discovers they understand every word he says, which is cool, but even more amazing is his extraordinary rapport with them – they obey every tiny gesture he makes, like Brad Pit’s pitbull in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and are just as deadly.
As the violence builds, a number of expendable villains are manufactured, including a slimy insurance inspector and a Latino gang who clash with Douglas, now a sort of mafia boss himself with his leather-and-metal bound legs, commanding his four-pawed army to commit crimes from the wheelchair. Viewers will be relieved to hear that no dogs are shown injured or worse on screen, no matter how many rounds of machine guns are fired at them.
Director, screenplay: Luc Besson
Cast: Caleb Landry Jones, Jojo T. Gibbs, Christopher Denham, Clemens Schick, Grace Palma
Producers: Virginie Besson-Silla, Steve Rabineau
Cinematography: Colin Wandersman
Editing: Julien Rey
Production design: Hughes Tissandier
Costume design: Corinne Bruand
Music: Eric Serra
Sound: Yves Leve?que, Guillaume Bouchateau, Aymeric Devolde?re, Ste?phane Thie?baut, Victor Praud
Production companies: LBP, EuropaCorp, TF1 Films Production
Venue: Venice Film Festival (Competition)
World sales: Kinology, EuropaCorp
In English
114 minutes
