Post by stephen on Nov 4, 2018 16:47:23 GMT
Matteo Garrone's follow-up to his excellent Tale of Tales is Dogman, the grungy story of a diminutive Italian dog-groomer who moonlights as a small-time coke dealer. Unlike Coppola and Scorsese, who showed the glitz and glamor of the gangster lifestyle in order to understand how one could be enamored with it, Garrone is much more interested in showing its seedy, ugly side for all it's worth (which isn't very much, as it turns out).
Marcello Fonte, who won the Best Actor prize at Cannes earlier this year, is no Ray Liotta or Al Pacino. In truth, he looks more like the poor mutts he tends to rather than a smoldering leading man. Yet Fonte projects a bizarre magnetism, the sort that makes you invite someone to a party out of pity and he becomes a part of your crew just because he's loyal. And indeed that's why the gangsters that Fonte's character (also named Marcello) tolerate his presence. But of course, Marcello's illicit activities start to cause problems -- particularly in the form of a muscle-bound cokehead named Simone (Edoardo Pesce, channeling the likes of De Niro and Schoenaerts) who bullies the timid dealer, forcing him to spiral deeper and deeper into the violent criminal underbelly.
Rarely does a film get under my skin, but Dogman made me want to take a long, hot shower afterward. Its grimy aesthetic oozes through the screen in a way that hasn't been seen since Refn's Pusher trilogy, and its inhabitants all feel like they were corralled from some back-alley bar. It's a film that shows that even dipping your toe into a cesspool risks getting caught in a riptide.
Marcello Fonte, who won the Best Actor prize at Cannes earlier this year, is no Ray Liotta or Al Pacino. In truth, he looks more like the poor mutts he tends to rather than a smoldering leading man. Yet Fonte projects a bizarre magnetism, the sort that makes you invite someone to a party out of pity and he becomes a part of your crew just because he's loyal. And indeed that's why the gangsters that Fonte's character (also named Marcello) tolerate his presence. But of course, Marcello's illicit activities start to cause problems -- particularly in the form of a muscle-bound cokehead named Simone (Edoardo Pesce, channeling the likes of De Niro and Schoenaerts) who bullies the timid dealer, forcing him to spiral deeper and deeper into the violent criminal underbelly.
Rarely does a film get under my skin, but Dogman made me want to take a long, hot shower afterward. Its grimy aesthetic oozes through the screen in a way that hasn't been seen since Refn's Pusher trilogy, and its inhabitants all feel like they were corralled from some back-alley bar. It's a film that shows that even dipping your toe into a cesspool risks getting caught in a riptide.
