TIFF Report: Citizen Dog Review
I've said it before and I'll say it again: Wisit Sasanatieng is an absolute visual genius. He has a gift for color, design, and sheet unadulterated whimsy that few - if any - can match anywhere in the world. Why is this man not famous, then? Well, you can thank the brothers Weinstein and their years of acquiring and burying Asian titles for that as Sasanatieng's fantastic debut film - Tears of the Black Tiger - is still sitting in the Miramax vaults, unlikely to ever be seen on this continent. It took a while but Sasanatieng returned with his sophomore effort this past year. Citizen Dog takes the wildly oversaturated color schemes, tongue and cheek humor and fantastical designs of Tears, amps them up a notch and moves them to a modern urban setting for this most unusual love story.
Told in chapters and heavily narrated by acclaimed Thai director Pen Ek Ratanaruang (Last Life In The Universe) Citizen Dog is the story of Pod, a young Thai man who leaves his remote village home to find work in Bangkok. On his depature his wizened grandmother yells after him that if he goes to Bangkok he will grow a tail. She cackles merrily away after delivering this bizarre warning that actually plays a major role by the end of things. Once in Bangkok Pod meets Jin, a young rural woman working as a maid in the same building where he acts as a security guard, and he falls deeply in love and is determined to win her over. Before he gets there, though, there are severed fingers, raining helmets, a ghostly motorcycle taxi driver, a foul mouthed chain smoking teddy bear, a lizard with grandma's head and an enormous mountain of empty plastic bottles to deal with. Clearly this is not your typical love story.
With it's incredible visual style and sense of fantasy the most obvious point of comparison for Citizen Dog is Jean Pierre Jeunet's Amelie. The comparison is fine as far as it goes but it doesn't go nearly far enough as Sasanatieng's visual skills outstrip even the French auteur's and thos evisual skills are very much a necessity as Sasanatieng embraces a very unusual narrative style. With its chapter structure and heavy emphasis on voice over narration Citizen Dog often feels more like a colorful storybook brought to life than it does a conventional film. The characters speak directly to and for themselves only when absolutely necesary, the rest of the time the story is told purely via images and narration. It is an unusual approach but one that works well for this world.
Happily enough it appears that Citizen Dog will escape the fate of Tears of the Black Tiger ... global rights have been purchased by Luc Besson's Europa Corp - they also agreed to finance Sasanatieng's next film as part of the deal - and it should be turning up around the world relatively soon.
