DOG DAYS (Hundstage)
Reviewed by: Harvey S. Karten Grade: B Leisure Time Features Directed by: Ulrich Seidl Written by: Ulrich Seidl, Veronika Franz Cast: Maria Hofstatter, Christine Jirku, Victor Hennemann, Georg Friedrich, Alfred Mrva, Erich Finsches, Gerti Lehner, Franziska Weiss, Rene Wanko, Claudia Martini, Victor Rathbone Screened at: Preview 9, NYC, 8/13/03
If you take Austrian Airlines to Vienna, as you begin your approach for a landing you'll pass over a (fictional) suburb that would make you think you're one flying over the cuckoo's nest. In Ulrich Seidl's frenzied imagination, the wide tract of land that forms the canvas of his film is inhabited by some of the most dysfunctional people in Central Europe which, given the history of the continent, is saying quite a lot. "Dog Days" might make you think of Harmony Korine's 1997 work "Gummo," though Korine's look at poor white trash in a small Ohio town is plotless, attempting to shock, while "Dog Days" does indeed succeed in riveting its audience. "Hundstage" is a story centering on six groups of people living off the autobahn who do not all meet in the end but who share the pain of loneliness, disillusionment and outright psychosis brought to a fever pitch by a particularly hot month of the year.
Seidl, whose cast mixes professional actors with some people who are actually in the profession they're representing (including the publisher of a pornographic magazine), dissects the unhappiness of the lot with an envelope that he pushes even beyond what has become acceptable to today's critical audience. Some of the picture is humorous, particularly the scenes of a nutty hitchhiker whose every appearance should bring a smile to the faces of the audience; some are sad, such as the case of a gone-to-seed woman who suffers a particularly brutal night in the presence of her man whose invited friend goads him on to incremental stage of brutality.
Seidl illustrates his characters' resentments and frustrations by taking each pair or trio separately, moving on to the next group, and heading back again to see how the previous creeps are doing. He opens on the only young couple, former beauty queen Klaudia (Franziska Weiss) who lives with her mother and goes out with Mario (Rene Wanko), who treats his fast car quite well while dealing putting his girlfriend through alternating moods of affection and downright belligerence. The car, which speeds and jerks and circles as though a trope of the driver's elevated testosterone, gives way to shots of people in the development lying deadly still while soaking up the rays and showing visible beads of sweat.
We are introduced to Anna (Maria Hofstatter), a professional hitchhiker, who regales her drivers with anything that comes to mind, illustrating the aphorism that if everyone told the truth all the time, there would not be two friends left in the world. An alarm man (Alfred Mrva) sells security systems and seems like the only normal guy in the crowd, but he shows his sadistic colors toward the conclusion of the story. A divorced man (Victor Rathbone) bounces a ball repeatedly in an apparent attempt to drive his ex-wife crazy, easy enough to do as the poor woman (Claudia Martini) lives in the same flat awaiting the unlikely departure of the furious athlete.
In the scene that appears to illustrate the film-maker's view on redemption promised by the Catholic Church, Lucky (George Friedrich), a handsome blonde man regularly frustrated by the women in his life, forces his friend (Victor Hennemann), to apologize to a woman for the brutal way that he and Lucky as well treated her during a frenzied night of near-carnage.
"Dog Days" would be simply too bleak to watch were it not for the regularly humorous turns involving hitchhiking Anna who seems to have no trouble getting lifts and is going no place fast. At times appearing an idiot-savant by rattling off top-ten lists (the most popular sexual positions, the most popular supermarkets and the like), Anna scarcely listens to what the hapless drivers say but is swift to tell them their flaws too old, bad teeth, tons of wrinkles so much so that it's a wonder that only one threw her out in the middle of the autobahn. A hard- core porno scene appears as though from another movie, a pudgy, older woman (Gerti Lehner) serving as a housekeeper to a man (Erich Finsches) who'd have celebrated his 50th anniversary if his wife were alive does a strip-tease for him, an old man who loves his big dog weighs what he brings home from the supermarket and returns the goods if his own scale indicates that the "cheating" store gave him a gram too little food.
We do wonder, though, whether director Seidl considers each of his characters an Everyman as though to say, "Forget about how these folks act when on the job...if you could only see inside their apartments and the grounds that encompass the developments, you'd give up on humanity." We get a clue by looking over the director's resume, which includes a TV film that ridicules modern art ("Bilder einer Ausstellung") and another that sensationalizes the kind petit brougeois life on exhibit in "Dog Days" ("The Last Real Men") In an interview given to Seidl by a Viennese author, Thomas Maurer, the director insists that "Life isn't about happiness, or at most it's about the search for happiness and the disillusionment over not being able to find it." No wonder we're bombarded daily by ads for products that virtually promise to make us ecstatic. As for me, the next time I go to Austria I intend to avoid the 'burbs, stick to the Kartnerstrasse, and munch on sacher tortes. That's happiness.
Not Rated. 125 minutes.(c) 2003 by Harvey Karten at Harveycritic@cs.com
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