Next to Umberto D., Chinese director Guan Hu may just have made the enduring masterpiece of man-and-dog movies – Citizen Canine, if you will – in this soul-filling homecoming odyssey set on the windswept fringes of the Gobi Desert.
Taiwanese heartthrob Eddie Peng, once the Hugh Grant of Chinese romcoms, plays against type as a brooding, shaven-headed ex-rock star and stunt biker called Lang. An intense man of few words, he’s a gnomic presence as he returns to his remote hometown after a stint in prison for manslaughter – equally hero-worshipped and hated.
A local snake-rearing gangster called Butcher Hu holds him responsible for his nephew’s death and is still thirsting for payback. (Chinese film geeks will get a kick out of seeing Still Life auteur Jia Zhangke as the grim-faced crime boss.)
The town that the writer-director sketches out in dusty increments hangs under a cloud of its own: this is the lead-up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics and China is taking a giant broom to its economic left-behinds. The populace is being relocated, and the local packs of stray dogs need to be rounded up. Short of options, Lang soon signs up to join the hastily assembled dog catching squads.
This seismic moment in the country’s recent history provides a symbolically apt backdrop to Peng’s return home. He’s trying to work through his baggage as everyone else is packing theirs.
This could be the Citizen Canine of dog movies
The dog of the title – a sinewy, reputedly rabid greyhound mix – offers Lang a foil and a path to rediscovering his sense of self. Their snappy early encounters give way to a deepening bond; two solitary souls forming one of the most touching on-screen relationships of the year.
Hu sprinkles in dreamlike visions of life in flux. Solar eclipses, venomous snakes on the loose and stray animals spilling out of the town’s ramshackle zoo offer surrealist stop-offs for Black Dog’s journey of rediscovery. The presence of a flirty, effervescent circus performer called Grape (Tong Liya) suggests romance. But among these arid landscapes and the increasingly deserted cityscape, eerily beautiful as they all are, love can’t easily blossom. The town is an abandoned playground for dreams that never quite came true.
Black Dog was the deserved winner for this year’s Un Certain Regard winner at Cannes, the prize for the most innovative, daring work of the festival (its dog star, Little Xin, was a winner at the festival’s unofficial canine awards, the Palm Dog, too). You’d be barking to miss it.
In UK cinemas Aug 30.