Can animals act? Reasonable people might say no: our four-legged friends can’t read a script or build character, and if they appear charismatic on screen, it’s simply due to obedience to commands, plus the deft touch of an editor. The more adaptive among us might say that these last two points apply to some human actors as well; Hitchcock pointed this out with his famous quip, “Actors are cattle.” Either way, it’s hard to watch Cody, the ragtag, starving star of “Dog on Trial,” without feeling, whether through good fortune or a vague process of empathy, a real performance in full swing.
Asked to jump, stagger, tremble, and even (sort of) sing, with an expressive range that spans unrestrained aggression and resigned melancholy, the biscuit-colored hybrid hits every mark asked of him by Letitia Duch’s eccentric directorial debut, and its feature debut. The most compelling element. In many films, this might seem minor; In the case of this parable, which is a serious animal rights parable disguised as a full-scale farce, this particular dog is certainly intended to have his day. (Rarely has a film seemed so meticulously crafted to win the Palme Dog for Best Canine Performance at Cannes, and sure enough, after Un Concern Regard’s premiere of Dog on Trial in May, Kodi took home the award well-deserved.)
Douche, the French-Swiss actress who broke through with her delightful star turn in 2017’s “Jeune Femme,” ostensibly plays Avril, a weary, good-hearted Swiss lawyer with a penchant for desperate cases, both personal and legal. sense. This time, unusually, poor mongrel Cosmos (Cody) and his human dog Dariush (Belgian comedian François Damien) face legal action after Cosmos bites and injures three women. Aside from Dariush’s debts to the victims, the law stipulates that the dog must be executed. Avril successfully argues that the universe, as an independent entity, must be judged independently, and so “The Trial of the Dog” continues.
This may seem like a prequel from a more vulgar era of family-friendly Hollywood comedies (perhaps “Beethoven’s Sixth Amendment”), but Douche’s script, which he co-wrote with Everything director Anne-Sophie Bailey, leans heavily into the absurdity of the idea. While filming for a biting satire of adults. The case quickly escalates – as is the case with everything in a frenetic, action-packed film, clocking in at just 80 minutes – into a national issue. Cause celebritiesinspiring vociferous public demonstrations for and against Cosmos’s right to life, while a parade of so-called experts takes a look at the morals and ethos of the common fool. Much of this is clever, as Dosch’s lively, anything-goes direction dips into animation and faux-documentary techniques to convey the intense rush of the media circus, while there are some philosophical musings on animal behavior and ethics amidst all the shenanigans.
However, sometimes “Dog on Trial’s” brash, busy style takes its toll. It’s packed with story for such a thinly framed work, as sketchily developed threads involving Avril’s colleagues and her only young neighbor for screen time grapple with the more substantial and directly relevant subplot of the lawyer’s growing connection to the court-appointed witch Cosmos. The therapist, Mark (winner Jean-Pascal Zadi), gradually relieves the abused animal under his care. Any dog lover will be completely disarmed by this development, and by Kodi’s irresistible enactment of this arc. But they’ll be subject to the film’s next bit of emphatic tonal swings, as its more grandiose storytelling impulses collide with some sense of duty to the realities of Switzerland’s legal system.
Consider it a misfit in the wasteland of recent French-language legal scholarship, from “Anatomy of a Fall” to “The Goldman Affair” — for all its frenzied tragic meanderings, “A Dog on Trial” ultimately takes the form of a procedural, concerned with how justice is determined and for whom. Dosch, as always, is an engaging presence off-camera. Behind him, she doesn’t have complete control over her film’s sparkling ideas and turbulent formal execution. However, there’s something suitably wild about it too. Knowing that not all viewers will side with him, Dog on Trial takes his turn with the animals, barking, scratching and occasionally behaving badly to make his point – and generously casts a spotlight on its hairiest hero to drive it home.