Animal Love

Austrian director Ulrich Seidl is less a conventional documentarian than a cinematic provocateur who uses artfully composed footage of real people to investigate the darker recesses of human experience. One might compare his visual austerity and often striking manipulation of images to the work of Diane Arbus and Errol Morris (especially the latter's Gates of Heaven, about pet cemeteries, which shares some general themes with this film). But Morris' more empathetic, poignant approach is miles removed from Seidl's, which here focuses on people who compensate for their lack of human contact by developing almost obsessive relationships with their pets--mostly dogs. The subjects are almost all somewhat repulsive but also pathetic, from two perpetually bickering elderly male roommates who shower attention on an untrained canine named Benjamin, or a derelict who buys a rabbit to use as a prop in his panhandling, to a thuggish-looking fellow who demands that the woman he's been living with get rid of her animals or risk losing him. Many are posed in various states of undress (hardly an attractive sight given most of the physiques), while some deliver rambling opinions to the camera or read passages from newspapers and books obliquely relevant to the picture's content. Like Seidl's first fiction film, Dog Days (VL-5/04), his 1996 Animal Love is deliberately unsettling, but it does reveal a side of life most viewers will have never even thought about (and many will wish they'd never been introduced to). A very morose take on human nature, Animal Love (which the box lists as being 46 minutes, but is actually 114 minutes) is recommended, with due caution. [Seidl's 1999 documentary Models is also newly available.] Aud: C, P. (F. Swietek)