This Cannes Un Certain Regard winner is a charmingly absurd tale of man’s best friend
Black Dog opens on the outskirts of the Gobi Desert, Northern China, empty and silent until the screen is filled with a pack of stray dogs. The variety of breeds, sizes and colours adding to the strange sight. Free, wild and… it seems, dangerous as they cause a bus to overturn.
A passenger on said bus is former stunt motorcyclist, Lang. A man of very few words, he is returning to his hometown of Chixia. A stagnated dying city on the verge of becoming a ghost town. Chixia is, unsurprisingly, overrun by dogs, former pets left behind by fleeing residents.
The powers that be seem to have forgotten about the town but someone has decided they need to do something about these dogs in preparation for the upcoming 2008 Olympics and a bounty is placed on one lone seemingly vicious black dog in particular. Lang unenthusiastically joins a local dog capturing team and finds himself bonding with this notorious black dog.
It’s a fascinating setting, the last breaths of a forgotten city set amongst a period celebrating Chinese national pride and triumph. It’s an increasingly surreal landscape of dying businesses, be it the grimmest location for a bungee jump ever or a dying zoo with a lonely and hungry tiger. This dreamlike strangeness works beautifully with an understated performance by Eddie Peng as Lang, a simple man making a new friend. One misunderstood loner finding another, each one possibly unaware of how much they need each other in this hostile and harsh landscape.
The balance of warmth and deadpan comedy is quite the tightrope walk but Black Dog pulls it off, making the film comparable to the work of Wes Anderson in more ways than one - a shot of a lone wolf on a hilltop will make fans of Fantastic Mr. Fox smile.
Achingly slow at times, the film rewards the viewer with a wonderful celebration of one of humanity’s oldest partnerships and it may make you want to stop by a rescue shelter on the way home with the message of this film ringing in your head - you may not get the dog you want but you get the dog you need.
