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   Tuesday, March 13, 2007

   YEAR OF THE DOG

One of the happier perks of working at fab is being invited to press screenings the week before a movie opens -- though it helps if the movie is good. I've recently seen Ghost Rider and 300 but it was last night's film that really intrigued me enough to write about it.

Judging from the trailer, Year of the Dog looks like an adorable romantic comedy for nerdy people who love their pets:



Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on your own tastes, Year of the Dog is much odder, darker and richer than that. The film is surprisingly bleak for a Hollywood film, examining grief, loneliness, materialism, altruism and disappointment in a way you don't often see in American movies. It's like a Friends episode directed by Ingmar Bergman. I found it strange, disjointed and badly paced, yet utterly charming and sensitive.

I laughed a lot -- surprisingly, when you consider the anguish of the film's opening sequence. I knew going in that Peggy's dog would die but I didn't expect the movie to deal with it head-on, in a frank and simple way. Her pain is direct and very real, and Molly Shannon plays it perfectly throughout. As a rocketing-to-middle-age man with a dog of my own, I identified way too hard with her character here, and it was all I could do to keep from flooding with tears and hopelessly embarrassing myself. I hugged Tegan for about half-an-hour when I got home so, if you go, bring a hankie.

It gets better from there, though. Year of the Dog is really an actors' movie. Everyone here is given a broad-brushstroke sitcom character but given time to colour in all that space with little defining moments. Peggy's boss, for instance, is written as a creepy sad-sack loser yet Josh Pais fleshes him out so well before our eyes that he becomes oddly endearing, even when he's still a jerk. Same with the great John C. Reilly as the neighbour and the delightful-yet-somehow-creepy Regina King as the best friend. Laura Dern, of course, once again proves she can do anything, but David Lynch fans already knew that.

My "someday-I'm-gonna-marry-that-boy" Peter Sarsgaard plays the love interest but, again, the movie paints a darker picture underneath all the cutesy stuff. His asexual nerdiness is clearly the result of some damage, and the movie hints at things sad and possibly horrible. I was surprised, upset and impressed all at once.

And finally there's the ending I obviously won't discuss, but one that left me pondering whether Peggy has found herself or destroyed her life altogether. The ending is a real Rorschach test. Together with the film's unforgivably-adorable music score, it's like watching a sitcom version of Kate Chopin's The Awakening.

Year of the Dog is a movie that claims achieving any kind of happiness is virtually impossible, yet unabashedly celebrates whatever crazy lengths people will go to try. I still can't decide if I want to hug it, or swat it with a rolled-up newspaper.

Labels: fab, movies, Tegan the Jack Russell Terrorist