7.4 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
Juha has lost his wife in a drowning accident. Years after he still feels numb and unable to connect with people. Meeting Mona, a dominatrix, changes everything.
Starring: Oona Airola, Krista Kosonen, Pekka Strang, Jani VolanenForeign | 100% |
Drama | 4% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.39:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
Finnish: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
English
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 4.5 | |
Extras | 3.5 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
Chances are most people will spend the majority of Dogs Don't Wear Pants trying to get a grip on the film's tone, to say nothing of its strange, evocative exploration of sexuality, grief, longing, and trauma recovery. Is it a black comedy? A bleak erotic melodrama? A slowburn psychological thriller spun round and round by its dizzying imagery? And just how dark will filmmaker J-P Valkeapää go? What begins in the vein of a sobering but provocative tumble down the BDSM rabbit hole soon shows itself to be something far more interesting; less sinister, more humanizing, and more compelling. It never fully wove its spell over me, yet I found its emotional core oddly moving as the story unfolded. Thought-provoking movies always give us things beyond ourselves to consider; experiences that needn't be our own to garner empathy and characters, however relatable or unrelatable, that suffer from the same universal condition we all do: the debilitating pain of loss and the healing power of connection and security.
Valkeapää and cinematographer Pietari Peltola performed extensive camera tests to ensure the film's more stylized bursts of light and color wouldn't spoil the film's photography, and their efforts have been rewarded. Backed by a striking 1080p/AVC-encoded video transfer, Dogs Don't Wear Pants looks exceptionally good, with searing primaries that pierce through the mundane, almost monochromatic greens, teals and beiges of Juha's everyday life. Blazing reds, absorbing blues and eerie yellow hallways combine with rich, inky black levels and smart contrast-leveling to create a truly breathtaking dueling pair of palettes. One boasts lifelike skintones, subdued hues and revealing shadow delineation. The other cranks the image's saturation and vibrancy, leaving quite the impact. Detail remains excellent in both cases, with crisp definition and exacting fine textures. Hotly contrasted sequences lose detail in the shadows, and there is a fair amount of crush, but largely by design. Grain, meanwhile, only spikes on occasion (almost always, if not always, the product of the stylized photography) and isn't hindered by any blocking or banding. Bottom line, Dogs Don't Wear Pants couldn't look much better than it does here.
Dogs Don't Wear Pants and its Finnish DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track oscillate between moments of quiet, almost calming normalcy and explosions of chaos, complete with moaning, screaming, violent noises and startling music cues. Dialogue is intelligible at all times (even though it won't matter much to anyone who doesn't speak the native language) and low-end effects connect with weight and presence. The rear speakers are engaging throughout as well, with an immersive soundfield that takes advantage of the ambient effects, acoustic properties and directional flair that come with a diverse array of locales; night clubs, sex dungeons, hushed hospitals, empty hallways, crowded streets and more. Each location is convincing and the lossless mix stays true to the film's sound design no matter what Valkeapää dreams up.
At the heart of Dogs Don't Wear Pants is a disarmingly sweet, exceedingly atypical love story... if you can find the humor rather than the horror in everything that transpires. It isn't a film that invites rewatches, nor does it attempt to do much more than weave a twisted modern BDSM fairy tale. But there's something here for those who respond to Valkeapää's sensibilities and dark comic stylings. The film's Blu-ray release is even better, with a striking video presentation, strong lossless audio track, and a solid assortment of special features that dig beneath the surface and unearth the meanings and purpose within Juha's story. Can't believe I'm about to do this -- I'm too vanilla for this to make much sense -- but I gotta recommend Dogs Don't Wear Pants. Here's hoping you're as surprised by what it actually offers as I was.
(Still not reliable for this title)
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