Dog Days
The picture that rocked Venice, winning the festival's Grand Jury Prize, Ulrich Seidl's nasty little satire probing the seamy underbelly of suburbia makes "American Beauty" look like "Father Knows Best".
And that's not necessarily a good thing.
"Dog Days" -- the first narrative feature by Austrian documentarian Seidl, whose controversial works are being featured in this year's Spotlight section at the Toronto International Film Festival -- is destined to offend.
Shot during the hottest days of three consecutive summers (1998-2000), the film is set in and around a coldly nondescript cluster of Vienna housing estates, where inhabitants beat the heat by sunbathing their not so perfect bodies when not engaging in all kinds of alcohol-soaked, certifiably depraved activities.
Among them:
A lonely old man (Erich Finsches) celebrates what would have been his 50th wedding anniversary by having his frumpy housekeeper (Gerti Lehner) do a striptease in his late wife's favorite dress.
A lonely teacher (Christine Jirku) is getting ready for a hot and heavy evening with her sleazy boyfriend (real-life Austrian pornographer Victor Hennemann), who shows up with a drunken friend.
A lonely divorced woman (Claudia Martini) has sex with her married masseur while her persona non grata ex-husband (Victor Rathbone), who still shares the same house, listens outside her bedroom door.
A lonely, somewhat disturbed young woman whiles away her days hitching rides and then annoying drivers with her nonstop recitations of top 10 lists (the top 10 supermarkets, the top 10 lovemaking positions, etc.) and commercial jingles.
And, of course, we haven't forgotten a brief but graphic orgy sequence that Seidl has thrown in at no extra cost.
He certainly coaxes some utterly immodest performances out of his cast of mainly nonactors, captured by cameraman Wolfgang Thaler with a coarse, casual sensationalism that suggests the work of still photographer Nan Goldin by way of John Waters.
But while it's all oddly intriguing up to a point -- visually, at least, the film has an undeniably quirky originality -- there's an overriding ugliness that prevails.
After two hours of raging misogyny and, for that matter, Seidl's apparent disdain of the human condition in general, "Dog Days" gives off the noxious stench of blatant self-indulgence.
DOG DAYS
The Coproduction Office presents
an Allegro Film production
Director: Ulrich Seidl
Producers: Helmut Grasserl, Philippe Bober
Screenwriters: Ulrich Seidl, Veronika Franz
Director of photography: Wolfgang Thaler
Production designers: Andreas Donhauser, Renate Martin
Editors: Andrea Wagner, Christof Schertenleib
Costume designer: Sabine Volz
Color/stereo
Cast:
The Hitchhiker: Maria Hofstatter
Alarm Systems Man: Alfred Mrva
The Old Man: Erich Finsches
The Housekeeper: Gerti Lehner
The Ex-wife: Claudia Martini
The Ex-husband: Victor Rathbone
The Masseur: Christian Bakonyi
The Teacher: Christine Jirku
Her Lover: Victor Hennemann
The Lover's Friend: Georg Friedrich
Running time -- 120 minutes
No MPAA rating...
And that's not necessarily a good thing.
"Dog Days" -- the first narrative feature by Austrian documentarian Seidl, whose controversial works are being featured in this year's Spotlight section at the Toronto International Film Festival -- is destined to offend.
Shot during the hottest days of three consecutive summers (1998-2000), the film is set in and around a coldly nondescript cluster of Vienna housing estates, where inhabitants beat the heat by sunbathing their not so perfect bodies when not engaging in all kinds of alcohol-soaked, certifiably depraved activities.
Among them:
A lonely old man (Erich Finsches) celebrates what would have been his 50th wedding anniversary by having his frumpy housekeeper (Gerti Lehner) do a striptease in his late wife's favorite dress.
A lonely teacher (Christine Jirku) is getting ready for a hot and heavy evening with her sleazy boyfriend (real-life Austrian pornographer Victor Hennemann), who shows up with a drunken friend.
A lonely divorced woman (Claudia Martini) has sex with her married masseur while her persona non grata ex-husband (Victor Rathbone), who still shares the same house, listens outside her bedroom door.
A lonely, somewhat disturbed young woman whiles away her days hitching rides and then annoying drivers with her nonstop recitations of top 10 lists (the top 10 supermarkets, the top 10 lovemaking positions, etc.) and commercial jingles.
And, of course, we haven't forgotten a brief but graphic orgy sequence that Seidl has thrown in at no extra cost.
He certainly coaxes some utterly immodest performances out of his cast of mainly nonactors, captured by cameraman Wolfgang Thaler with a coarse, casual sensationalism that suggests the work of still photographer Nan Goldin by way of John Waters.
But while it's all oddly intriguing up to a point -- visually, at least, the film has an undeniably quirky originality -- there's an overriding ugliness that prevails.
After two hours of raging misogyny and, for that matter, Seidl's apparent disdain of the human condition in general, "Dog Days" gives off the noxious stench of blatant self-indulgence.
DOG DAYS
The Coproduction Office presents
an Allegro Film production
Director: Ulrich Seidl
Producers: Helmut Grasserl, Philippe Bober
Screenwriters: Ulrich Seidl, Veronika Franz
Director of photography: Wolfgang Thaler
Production designers: Andreas Donhauser, Renate Martin
Editors: Andrea Wagner, Christof Schertenleib
Costume designer: Sabine Volz
Color/stereo
Cast:
The Hitchhiker: Maria Hofstatter
Alarm Systems Man: Alfred Mrva
The Old Man: Erich Finsches
The Housekeeper: Gerti Lehner
The Ex-wife: Claudia Martini
The Ex-husband: Victor Rathbone
The Masseur: Christian Bakonyi
The Teacher: Christine Jirku
Her Lover: Victor Hennemann
The Lover's Friend: Georg Friedrich
Running time -- 120 minutes
No MPAA rating...
- 7/8/2004
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Dog Days
The picture that rocked Venice, winning the festival's Grand Jury Prize, Ulrich Seidl's nasty little satire probing the seamy underbelly of suburbia makes "American Beauty" look like "Father Knows Best".
And that's not necessarily a good thing.
"Dog Days" -- the first narrative feature by Austrian documentarian Seidl, whose controversial works are being featured in this year's Spotlight section at the Toronto International Film Festival -- is destined to offend.
Shot during the hottest days of three consecutive summers (1998-2000), the film is set in and around a coldly nondescript cluster of Vienna housing estates, where inhabitants beat the heat by sunbathing their not so perfect bodies when not engaging in all kinds of alcohol-soaked, certifiably depraved activities.
Among them:
A lonely old man (Erich Finsches) celebrates what would have been his 50th wedding anniversary by having his frumpy housekeeper (Gerti Lehner) do a striptease in his late wife's favorite dress.
A lonely teacher (Christine Jirku) is getting ready for a hot and heavy evening with her sleazy boyfriend (real-life Austrian pornographer Victor Hennemann), who shows up with a drunken friend.
A lonely divorced woman (Claudia Martini) has sex with her married masseur while her persona non grata ex-husband (Victor Rathbone), who still shares the same house, listens outside her bedroom door.
A lonely, somewhat disturbed young woman whiles away her days hitching rides and then annoying drivers with her nonstop recitations of top 10 lists (the top 10 supermarkets, the top 10 lovemaking positions, etc.) and commercial jingles.
And, of course, we haven't forgotten a brief but graphic orgy sequence that Seidl has thrown in at no extra cost.
He certainly coaxes some utterly immodest performances out of his cast of mainly nonactors, captured by cameraman Wolfgang Thaler with a coarse, casual sensationalism that suggests the work of still photographer Nan Goldin by way of John Waters.
But while it's all oddly intriguing up to a point -- visually, at least, the film has an undeniably quirky originality -- there's an overriding ugliness that prevails.
After two hours of raging misogyny and, for that matter, Seidl's apparent disdain of the human condition in general, "Dog Days" gives off the noxious stench of blatant self-indulgence.
DOG DAYS
The Coproduction Office presents
an Allegro Film production
Director: Ulrich Seidl
Producers: Helmut Grasserl, Philippe Bober
Screenwriters: Ulrich Seidl, Veronika Franz
Director of photography: Wolfgang Thaler
Production designers: Andreas Donhauser, Renate Martin
Editors: Andrea Wagner, Christof Schertenleib
Costume designer: Sabine Volz
Color/stereo
Cast:
The Hitchhiker: Maria Hofstatter
Alarm Systems Man: Alfred Mrva
The Old Man: Erich Finsches
The Housekeeper: Gerti Lehner
The Ex-wife: Claudia Martini
The Ex-husband: Victor Rathbone
The Masseur: Christian Bakonyi
The Teacher: Christine Jirku
Her Lover: Victor Hennemann
The Lover's Friend: Georg Friedrich
Running time -- 120 minutes
No MPAA rating...
And that's not necessarily a good thing.
"Dog Days" -- the first narrative feature by Austrian documentarian Seidl, whose controversial works are being featured in this year's Spotlight section at the Toronto International Film Festival -- is destined to offend.
Shot during the hottest days of three consecutive summers (1998-2000), the film is set in and around a coldly nondescript cluster of Vienna housing estates, where inhabitants beat the heat by sunbathing their not so perfect bodies when not engaging in all kinds of alcohol-soaked, certifiably depraved activities.
Among them:
A lonely old man (Erich Finsches) celebrates what would have been his 50th wedding anniversary by having his frumpy housekeeper (Gerti Lehner) do a striptease in his late wife's favorite dress.
A lonely teacher (Christine Jirku) is getting ready for a hot and heavy evening with her sleazy boyfriend (real-life Austrian pornographer Victor Hennemann), who shows up with a drunken friend.
A lonely divorced woman (Claudia Martini) has sex with her married masseur while her persona non grata ex-husband (Victor Rathbone), who still shares the same house, listens outside her bedroom door.
A lonely, somewhat disturbed young woman whiles away her days hitching rides and then annoying drivers with her nonstop recitations of top 10 lists (the top 10 supermarkets, the top 10 lovemaking positions, etc.) and commercial jingles.
And, of course, we haven't forgotten a brief but graphic orgy sequence that Seidl has thrown in at no extra cost.
He certainly coaxes some utterly immodest performances out of his cast of mainly nonactors, captured by cameraman Wolfgang Thaler with a coarse, casual sensationalism that suggests the work of still photographer Nan Goldin by way of John Waters.
But while it's all oddly intriguing up to a point -- visually, at least, the film has an undeniably quirky originality -- there's an overriding ugliness that prevails.
After two hours of raging misogyny and, for that matter, Seidl's apparent disdain of the human condition in general, "Dog Days" gives off the noxious stench of blatant self-indulgence.
DOG DAYS
The Coproduction Office presents
an Allegro Film production
Director: Ulrich Seidl
Producers: Helmut Grasserl, Philippe Bober
Screenwriters: Ulrich Seidl, Veronika Franz
Director of photography: Wolfgang Thaler
Production designers: Andreas Donhauser, Renate Martin
Editors: Andrea Wagner, Christof Schertenleib
Costume designer: Sabine Volz
Color/stereo
Cast:
The Hitchhiker: Maria Hofstatter
Alarm Systems Man: Alfred Mrva
The Old Man: Erich Finsches
The Housekeeper: Gerti Lehner
The Ex-wife: Claudia Martini
The Ex-husband: Victor Rathbone
The Masseur: Christian Bakonyi
The Teacher: Christine Jirku
Her Lover: Victor Hennemann
The Lover's Friend: Georg Friedrich
Running time -- 120 minutes
No MPAA rating...
- 9/17/2001
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
IMDb.com, Inc. takes no responsibility for the content or accuracy of the above news articles, Tweets, or blog posts. This content is published for the entertainment of our users only. The news articles, Tweets, and blog posts do not represent IMDb's opinions nor can we guarantee that the reporting therein is completely factual. Please visit the source responsible for the item in question to report any concerns you may have regarding content or accuracy.