Direction: Ana Katz
Country: Argentina
Ana Katz’s black-and-white experimentation, The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be Quiet, is a concise drama film that depicts life with all its struggles: loss, work, family, fatherhood, and even the unexpected. It’s also a wry commentary on the alienation and sense of despondency felt throughout the world. Shot over the course of five years but unspooling in just 73 minutes, the film’s sketchy montages quickly lull into slowly-paced monotony.
Sometimes tender, sometimes poignant, other times offbeat and speculative, this film can be thought provoking, especially while cloaking tragedy in a veil of humor. However, it doesn't add up to anything really bold apart from an unaccountable pandemic created by a meteor phenom. A mildly promising premise still sputters thanks to a completely silent dog said to be crying at all times, but even this segment feels ‘abandoned’.
The director’s brother, actor Daniel Katz, is Seba, a man in his thirties who goes through some difficult moments before achieving some desired stability in life. Absurdist humor is injected, occasionally causing surprise. Yet, for the most part, the film is tonally balmy. I cannot say it was hard to sit through and try to figure out the potential of its ideas. The problem is that every idea is cut up to pieces in a split of a second. Despite the setbacks, including the numerous possibilities to become better articulated and less disintegrated, I’m sympathetic enough to Katz's unclassifiable project, which will certainly find an arthouse niche for itself.
