Category: Movies

‘Dog on Trial’ Review: Zany Courtroom Comedy With a Canine Star Turn

Laetitia Dosch
Laetitia Dosch makes her directorial debut

Laetitia Dosch’s ‘Dog on Trial’ delivers what its title promises, but surprises with its tonal swerves and the magnetic presence of its non-human MVP.

By Gut Lodge

Can animals act? Sensible people would say not: Our four-legged friends can’t read a script or construct a character, and if they come across charismatically on screen, that’s simply down to obeying commands, plus the deft touch of an editor. The more whimsically accommodating among us would say those last two points are true of some human actors too; Hitchcock, with his infamous “actors are cattle” quip, suggested as much. Either way, it’s hard to watch Kodi, the ragged, hungry-eyed canine star of “Dog on Trial,” without sensing, whether by sheer good fortune or some mysterious process of empathy, a genuine performance afoot.

Called upon to jump, slump, tremble and even (sort of) sing, with an expressive range spanning untethered aggression and resigned melancholy, the biscuit-colored crossbreed hits every mark required of him by Laetitia Dosch‘s endearingly eccentric directorial debut, and emerges as its most compelling element. On many films, that would seem a slight; in the case of this one, an earnest animal-rights parable in the guise of a broad knockabout farce, it’s surely the intention for this particular dog to have his day. (Rarely has a film seemed so precision-engineered to win the Palme Dog award for best canine performer at Cannes, and sure enough, following “Dog on Trial’s” Un Certain Regard premiere in May, Kodi duly and deservedly took the prize.)

Dosch, the French-Swiss actor who broke through with her delightful star turn in 2017’s “Jeune Femme,” ostensibly plays the lead as Avril, a frazzled, kind-hearted Swiss lawyer with a penchant for hopeless cases, in both the personal and legal sense. This time, unusually, it’s woebegone mongrel Cosmos (Kodi) and his equally hangdog human Dariuch (Belgian actor-comedian François Damiens), who’s facing legal action after Cosmos bit and injured three women. Separate from Dariuch’s debt to the victims, the law states that the dog should be put down. Avril successfully argues that, as an autonomous being, Cosmos should be tried independently, and so “Dog on Trial” proceeds.

This may sound like a premise from a more naïve era of family-friendly Hollywood creature comedies (“Beethoven’s Sixth Amendment,” perhaps), but Dosch’s script, co-written with “My Everything” director Anne-Sophie Bailly, leans hard into the absurdity of the idea while shooting for scathing adult satire. The case escalates fast — as does everything in a frenetic, incident-crammed film, clocking in at just 80 minutes — into a national cause célèbre, inspiring rowdy public demonstrations for and against Cosmos’s right to live, while a procession of professed experts weigh in on the morality and soul of the common mutt. Much of this is witty, as Dosch’s exuberant, up-for-anything direction dips into animation and faux-documentary stylings to convey the barrelling rush of a media circus, while there’s some considered philosophical reflection on animal behavior and ethics amid all the hijinks.

At times, however, “Dog on Trial’s” brash, busy approach leashes its impact. It’s top-heavy with story for such a slender-framed work, as sketchily developed strands involving Avril’s colleagues and her lonely young neighbor jostle for screen time with the more substantial and immediately relevant subplot of the lawyer’s growing attachment to Cosmos’s charming, court-appointed handler Marc (a winning Jean-Pascal Zadi), and the mistreated animal’s gradual softening under his care. Any dog lover will be thoroughly disarmed by this development, and by Kodi’s irresistible enactment of this arc. But they’ll be vulnerable to the next of the film’s emphatic tonal lurches, as its zanier storytelling impulses ran into some sense of duty to the realities of Switzerland’s legal system.

Consider it the shaggy misfit in the litter of recent French-language legal studies, from “Anatomy of a Fall” to “The Goldman Case” — for all its hectic tragicomic slaloming, “Dog on Trial” ultimately takes the shape of a procedural, interested in how justice is determined, and for whom. Dosch is, as ever, an appealingly off-kilter presence before the camera; behind it, she doesn’t have complete control over her film’s wriggling ideas and restless formal execution. Yet there’s something quite suitably untamed about it too. Knowing not all viewers will be on its side, “Dog on Trial” throws its lot in with the animals, barking and clawing and occasionally behaving badly to make its point — and generously throwing the spotlight on its hairier hero to bring that home.

Source: ‘Dog on Trial’ Review: Zany Courtroom Comedy With a Canine Star Turn

Director pays bittersweet homage to late actress

Luc Dardenne would have liked to work with Emilie Dequenne again

The tale of actress Emilie Dequenne is the stuff of legend. At age 17, she appeared in her first film and then found herself crowned at the Cannes Film Festival. The film was Rosetta – a harrowing tale of growing up in poverty in a post-industrial region of Belgium. The film was a turning point in the career of Duquenne, the Dardenne brothers Luc and Jean-Pierre that directed it and even on Belgium’s place in world cinema.

“It’s really unfair to die so young”

Dequenne sadly passed away recently at the age of 43. For director Luc Dardenne, the pain is double. “It’s really unfair to die so young,” he told the daily Libre Belgique. “We all know what Emilie did for cinema, but we’ll never know what she could still have done.”

Unlike other actors that the Dardenne brothers worked with, Dequenne never appeared in another of their films. Dardenne regrets this. “She told us, ‘You’ll never work with me again as I’m still Rosetta for you’. She was right.”

Although they had thought of her occasionally, they felt she needed a strong lead role. “But now that will never happen because of this damn disease.”

(Michael Leahy. Source: La Libre Belgique. Photo: Nicolas Landemard / Picture Alliance )

Source: Director pays bittersweet homage to late actress

“Queen Mother”: Manele Labini invites Camelia Jordana and the ghost of Charles Martel in a second film full of fantasy

By Laurence Houot

After taking an ironic look at her country in Un divan à Tunis , the Franco-Tunisian director this time delves into the daily life of an immigrant family struggling in a France where it is sometimes complicated to feel at home. Reine mère , starring Camélia Jordana, Sofiane Zermani and Damien Bonnard, is released in theaters on Wednesday, March 12.

The film opens with a swim in the Mediterranean sparkling with sunshine. The image, like an idyllic vision of origins, is quickly chased away by the return to reality. Barely back from vacation in France, Amel (Camélia Jordana) and her husband Amor (Sofiane Zermani) learn by mail that they will have to leave their home. For Amel, there is no question of changing neighborhoods. She wants the best for her two daughters, who attend a Catholic school very close to their home. It is there, during a history lesson, that Mouna (Rim Monfort) sees the ghost of Charles Martel (Damien Bonnard) appear for the first time. 

While her husband, an electrician, supports the entire family, Amel refuses to work. Without a diploma, she could not hope for better than a job as a cleaning lady, unthinkable for this proud woman who repeats over and over that she grew up in a wealthy family in Tunis. Amor, for his part, struggles to the task. An eternal optimist, he does everything, in vain, to satisfy his capricious wife. As for Doumia, she ends up transforming the ghost of Charles Martel into an imaginary friend, who will help her find her place in a world that rejects her.

In 2020, the Franco-Tunisian director told the story of her country, in full transformation, in Un divan à Tunis , through the story of a psychoanalyst returning home. She explores this question of exile, this time on this side of the Mediterranean, with a second film in the form of a tale that has fun deconstructing the mythological figure of Charles Martel.

Lack of consideration and self-deprecation

How do children feel when they are told at school this story of Charles Martel stopping the Arabs in 732? It is by putting herself in the shoes of a young teenager confronted with this experience that the director pulls the threads of this dramatic comedy in the form of a tale.

With dialogues that hit the mark and this nice idea of ​​staging the ghost of Charles Martel, the director explores the question of exile and immigration from the point of view of a teenager, who receives unfiltered messages that are indirectly addressed to her in class, and in her everyday life. Manele Labini highlights the underlying, constitutive violence of institutions towards those who come from elsewhere. From administrative hassles to ordinary racism. Between clumsiness and malice, the film highlights the lack of consideration of which they are victims in many situations of daily life.

But the film does not just pin down (tenderly, but without concessions) France. It also plays on self-mockery through the portrait of Amel, who ends up becoming annoying because she puts so much bad will into it. Downgraded, this whimsical and proud woman wants to keep her dignity, in all circumstances. If she has to do the housework, it will be without an apron and heels on her feet. Even if she is the laughing stock of her friends, characters with joyful verve, who we are pleased to meet intermittently throughout the film, Amel does not let her life be dictated to her. 

One myth against another

Manele Labini enjoys staging two mystifications of the past face to face: on the one hand this largely mythological “fable” always told in history books around the figure of Charles Martel, and on the other the self-mystification of a woman who invents a glorious past to better bear the weight of exile. Through this adventure, Amel, like Charles Martel, will try to escape the stories that imprison them. Because how can we live well in the present when the past imprisons us? This universal question runs through this film full of surprises.

The spirited production is carried by the generosity of the actors. The overflowing and sunny character of Amel seems to have been made for Camélia Jordana. Damien Bonnard, chainmail and cigarette in mouth, plays a ghost of iconoclastic Charles Martel, and forms a touching duo with the young Rim Monfort in the role of Mouna, for whom he represents the imaginary friend she needed to confront the invasive nature of her mother, and a hostile school environment. As for the sympathetic character of Amor, he is carried by the luminous Sofiane Zermani.

Even if the line is sometimes a little heavy-handed, this modern tale sheds new light on the unique feeling of exile, and the battles that one must sometimes wage with oneself, with others, and with institutions, to feel at home.

Damien Bonnard, extremely comfortable in his chainmail, shares the bill for this modern tale with Camelia Jordana, perfect in the role of “Queen Mother” made for her.

Source: “Queen Mother”: Manele Labini invites Camelia Jordana and the ghost of Charles Martel in a second film full of fantasy

Claude Lelouch Recalls ‘Chabadabada’ Composer Francis Lai

Claude
Director Claude Lelouch

The 52-year, 35-picture collaboration between Lelouch and Lai was at the heart of a masterclass by the director at the Venice Film Festival

By Melenie Goodfellow | Aug 2024

French director Claude Lelouch first broke out internationally with 1966 romance A Man and a Woman, starring Anouk Aimee and Jean-Louis Trintignant as a widow and widower whose fledgling love story is held back by past personal tragedies.

Nearly 60 years later, the soundtrack by late composer Francis Lai – and in particular its title track, which is often referred to as ‘Chabadabada’ for its catchy refrain – remains as famous, if not more famous, than the Oscar and Cannes Palme d’Or-winning feature

That movie would mark the start of a 52-year, 35-picture collaboration between Lelouch and Lai, which was at the heart of a music-themed masterclass by Lelouch at the Venice Film Festival on Saturday.

The director is at the festival to receive the Cartier Glory To The Filmmaker Award as well as for the premiere of new work Finalement, starring an ensemble cast led by Kad Merad and also featuring Elsa Zylberstain, Michel Boujenah, Sandrine Bonnaire, Barbara Pravi and Françoise Gillard.

Lelouch first met Lai in 1965 having forged strong connections with the music world through his music videos for the likes of Sylvie Vartan, Françoise Hardy and Dionne Warwick, directing her singing ‘Walk On By’ against the Paris skyline in 1964.

“He spent two hours two hours playing me melodies on his accordion and these melodies spoke to me, to my heart, to the essential,” recounted Lelouch. “He was completely self-taught and there was great freedom in his way of playing, in his harmonies and tonalities.”

Lai’s compositions became part of Lelouch’s creative process as a director and he would get the musician-composer to write soundtracks for his films on the basis of his ideas as part of development.

“I recorded the music for all my films before shooting the films, because I really wanted the actors to listen to the soundtrack and I myself needed to listen to it,” he explained.

This even resulted in two separate films coming to fruition on the basis of Lai’s two musical interpretations of the same idea: Love Is A Funny Thing (1969) and One Plus One (2015).

Lelouch explained how he used the score on set of a Love Is A Funny Thing – starring Jean-Paul Belmondo and Annie Girardot as a French composer and actress who meet while working in L.A.

“In the final scene Annie Girardot’s character is waiting for Belmondo’s character at the airport. She (Girardot) didn’t know whether he was going to descend from the plane or not… the camera is on Girardot, and in Girardot’s ear is the music of the film,” he explained.

“What is interesting is that she really didn’t know whether he was going to come down the steps or not. She wasn’t acting. If she had known, she would have still played the scene well… but in real-life we don’t act.”

Lelouch did not make all his films with Lai, collaborating with other composers such as Michel Legrand, and even bringing their talents together on Bolero, the 1981 saga tracking three generations of musicians and dancers from Russia, Germany, France and the U.S.

The director said this had kept their creative relationship fresh.

“It’s true I did cheat on him from time to time,” he joked. “Francis Lee was always delighted when I came home, like a wife who is happy to see her husband come back home.

“That allowed us not to get too used to one another and this liberty also allowed him to work with other directors too… then, when we re-found one another, we wanted to seduce each other once again.”

Source: Claude Lelouch Recalls ‘Chabadabada’ Composer Francis Lai