Dogman

What it takes for a good man to make something atrocious? Pretty much that's the simple premise on Matteo Garrone's new film, Dogman, that follows the owner of a dog grooming local in a small town that is controlled by his violent thieve friend. Garrone is quite a fan of presenting violence and shocking visual sequences on screen, but in Dogman he pairs his neo-neorrealism with touches of dark comedy.

From the opening scene, where Marcello, the main character, tries to give a bath to a ferocious big dog, staying gentle and friendly with the animal no matter how much it tries to attack him, the director is able to give us a precise glimpse on who's this guy, what are his virtues, and what will be the reason why he'll eventually be driven to a spiral of madness. A strong character construction might be the best virtue of the film, for which Marcello Fonte won the Best Actor in this year's Cannes Film Festival. We are facing a character that somehow, no matter how much of a common man he is, we can't help but care for him. This guy makes very questionable life choices, mostly on who he surrounds with, but his high morals and his extreme love and care for animals make him quite endearing. The title choice is not casual, not only Marcello devotes his life to dogs, he shares with them his main quality, a extreme loyalty.

The interactions between Marcello Fonte and Edoardo Pesce, who plays his gangster ultra-violent friend, are quite enjoyable, the mismatch of characters, both in physical appearance and personality, makes for delightful scenes that most of the time play with dark humor to show the ridicule on human comedy. A couple of great performances that help each other to shine by opposition and by understanding very well their characters and their relationship. While Fonte is lovable, Pesce creates a dangerous criminal that gives us the chill and that is able to get us in constant tension with his reckless behavior and his savage ways.

And beyond the great screenplay and superb performances, Garrone also is great with his artistic techniques. A great use of camera movements and angles that helps to construct the tension, and an elegant use of color, tonalities and shades, make Dogman a visual experience as good as it is in the narrative. A great selection of location creates this gloomy and desolate setting that serves for the general mood of the film, that inherits quite a few things from classic neorealist Italian directors like De Sica or Rossellini.

Dogman is probably the best film of Garrone to date, a deep exploration of the absurd and how a bad decision could lead to another and another until you're trap in a web of despair. A perfect tragicomic tone and a display of the best abilities of a director, mixing the violence of Gomorrah and the social satire of Reality, only that much better than any of those, to drawn us toward his story and his characters make this quite an experience. The film is an aggressive dog ready to bite and knock you out.