Dog Days: A Review of a Film by Austrian Director Ulreich Siedl

Dog Days is a film by Austrian director Ulrich Sieldl, which was shown at Britain's 28th Cambridge Film Festival and on tour.

"Disconnected" and "desperation," the brochure says. These are two words I can only use to describe the film itself - not its alleged portrayal of middle-class life. Other bleak, naturalistic ensemble-cast films are more successful. Babel's redeeming ending was worth sitting through it for, and the character's narrative strands (albeit tenuously) were all united; but not here. The style of grainy stock and poor, diagetic-only sound (i.e. no overlayed music) will render this film appealing to some and alienating to others.

Even for fans of the genre, this doesn't have After the Wedding's brilliance or match the compelling - though equally dismal and suddenly ending - final Dogme film In Your Hands. Stylistically, it's also like Wonderland, although nothing in Winterbottom's 1999 film was as uneasy to view as latter parts of Dog Days.

For a time, Dog Days is humorous - especially the unbalanced hitchhiker whose blunt statements and intimate questions made one gasp. What was refreshing about the nudity was that it showed bodies not normally seen or screens - older, unhoned. Yet this all seemed to lead to degradation of people who did not defend themselves, without justice for the perpetrators or healing for the victims. The realism was only through its documentary style, not because it depicted anything akin to life: the scenarios seemed theatrically contrived. The film ended without hope, explanation or even closure. To view hopelessness as realism is a choice. By the end, the strands were so unengaging that this film was ultimately a dull and for some offensive and unpleasant experience.