“Two tickets for Wiener-Dog, please.”
“The auditorium should be all right for you now.”
“That’s good”, I replied, wondering why the box office person would say that.
“There are bottles of water outside the auditorium in case it’s too hot”, he continued.
A scrap of paper taped up on one side of the box office explained that there had been a fault with the air conditioning earlier in the day, but that it should be ok now.
As this was a hot and humid day in central London, it was reassuring to know that the problem had been fixed.
Spending two hours of this August afternoon in a sweltering auditorium would not have been much fun.
Clutching our tickets, we made our way up to Screen 3.
Very comfy seats in this auditorium, and plenty leg room in the row near the back where we sat.
From the opening few minutes, I knew I was going to like Wiener-Dog.
This film is an understated tour de force by writer and director Todd Solondz, director of photography Edward Lachman (who was also DP on Todd Haynes’ masterpiece Carol), and a superb cast who perfectly inhabit their downbeat characters.
Categorising Wiener-Dog as a comedy, as do IMDB and others, doesn’t do justice to the visual elegance and melancholy depths of this wonderful film.
What caught my eye right from the start was the care taken with the compositions. Lingering establishing shots initiate several scenes, with nothing particularly happening, perfectly composed frames that are dwelt on just long enough to allow the story to breathe.
The uncluttered minimalism of some scenes heightens their impact and draws the viewer in.
The early scene of the titular dachshund being put in the back of a pickup truck and transported to be sold could have been done mawkishly with sentimental music manipulating our heartstrings, but instead all we see is the blue sky high up above viewed through the bars of the dog’s cage.
Tracy Letts and Julie Delpy get things off to a great start as bickering couple Danny and Dina.
Letts declaims his lines in an amusingly theatrical manner, simmering with frustration and anger.
The juxtaposition of Debussy’s wistful, contemplative ‘Clair de Lune’ as accompanying music to the appalling consequences of feeding the dog a granola bar is a memorable distasteful-but-funny scene.
Greta Gerwig (as Dawn Wiener) and Kieran Culkin (as Brandon) take over as the new owners of the dog in the next segment of the film. This is maybe the most moving of the four stories that the film consists of.
The relationship between Dawn and Brandon is very low-key, but subtle and touching.
It’s with Danny DeVito’s section of the film that the biggest laughs come, though the weary sadness of the preceding sections continues as frustrated film school professor Dave Schmerz (DeVito) finds himself increasingly alienated from his working environment.
There’s a very funny scene in which Schmerz and two exasperated colleagues interview a student applicant who cannot name a single film that he has seen in the past year.
Ellen Burstyn (as Nana), Zosia Mamet (as Zoe) and Michael James Shaw (as Fantasy) feature in the fourth and final story. As in the earlier stories, the interplay between the characters is very subtly observed.
Not so subtle is what befalls the dog, and I’m not surprised that some audience members at the Sundance screening of ‘Wiener-Dog’ booed and walked out.
My companion here today at Picturehouse Central was a bit shocked and traumatised at that scene.
After the film it was down to the Royal Festival Hall bar for a beer, which we took outside as it was such a beautiful, warm evening.
We then walked a bit further along the riverbank for another beer at Doggetts Coat & Badge, again taking the drinks outside where there was a great view of St Paul’s Cathedral, its pale blue dome the exact same shade of blue as the evening sky.
From there we continued along the riverside past Tate Modern and Shakespeare’s Globe, ending up at wonderful Borough Market for a final beer before catching the Northern Line home.
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