Forget
about Mars and Venus, Red and Blue, or any other social dichotomies. According
to this film, humanity is really made up of dogs and hogs. The former are loyal
and obedient, whereas the latter are dirty, self-indulgent, and perverse.
Either way, man remains inherently animalistic. Andrés Goteira invites us to
take a good hard look at human nature and then shows us up for being
voyeuristic in Dhogs (trailer here), which screens during
the 2017 Morbido Film Fest, in CDMX.
Essentially,
Dhogs is a Galician language serial
killer movie (explaining its presence at Morbido), except it actually gets
worse than that for one prospective victim. The narrative is sort of a triptych,
but the interconnecting links are especially random for this sort of
post-Tarantino movie. Perhaps the weirdest thing going on is Goteira’s explicit
homages to Léos Carax’s Holy Motors,
of all films.
The
unnamed cabbie is sort of Monsieur Oscar figure, but before proceeding with his
head-scratching business, he will drop off a middle-aged businessman, who will subsequently
pick up a younger woman in the bar of his hotel. Their illicit courtship will
be closely watched by the bartender, another patron, and what appears to be a
theater audience, in a recurring bit of meta fourth wall-breaking gamesmanship.
Unfortunately,
“Álex” as she calls herself, will be abducted by a serial killer during her
walk-of-shame from the hotel. From here on out, the film gets drastically darker
and dramatically more violent. Frankly, her initial abductor will not even be
the worst of her problems, but he is still pretty damn bad.
The
second and third acts have some tough stuff that is truly punishing to watch.
To cap it all off, the big concluding revelation manages to be both
disappointing and disturbing. It is true Goteira is trying to say something the
dehumanizing influences of our hedonistic contemporary culture, but he really
flogs the viewer with his depictions of man’s bestial treatment of his fellow
man.
