REVIEWS
68 | Sight&Sound | April 2019Reviewed by Anton Bitel
In the grand tradition of psychological dramas,
Dogs Don’t Wear Pants opens with a primal
scene: in trying to rescue his already dead wife,
who has become trapped in an underwater net,
Juha (Pekka Strang) too almost drowns, before
he is pulled out semiconscious by a passing
fisherman – all before the eyes of four-year-old
daughter Elli. Finnish director J-P Valkeapää,
co-writing with Juhana Lumme, goes on to
restage and renegotiate this family tragedy
through the unexpected language of BDSM.
A decade or so later, while the now teenage
Elli (Ilona Huhta) is having her tongue pierced
as a tentative birthday rite of passage, Juha
wanders downstairs into a dungeon, where his
transgressive intrusion sees him knocked over
and held in a stranglehold by the dominatrix
Mona (Krista Kosonen). The resulting sense
of suffocation reawakens in him a perverse
longing for his wife’s watery embrace, and
he starts regularly visiting Mona for sessions
of dog-like subjugation that always climax
with his being choked to – and beyond – the
point of unconsciousness, so that he can
drown once again in grief, guilt and desire.
The bondage setting might suggest pure
kink, but Juha is figured as a deeply damaged,despairing man who is exploring his unresolved
feelings and dangerous death wish. Mona, who
works by day as a physiotherapist, offers him a
different kind of therapeutic programme, which
quickly turns into an addiction that upends
both his relationship with adolescent Elli and
his professional life as – ironically, for this most
heartbroken of characters – a cardiothoracic
surgeon. His obsessive pursuit of Mona – or at
least the smothering service she provides – soon
leaves him bruised, hospitalised and clearly
not in his right mind, even as Mona finds her
client’s needy submission chiming with her own
impulses to both harm and heal. As something
of a romance develops between them, the film’s
great paradox is that the more Juha is able to
translate his suicidal Liebestod into ‘conventional’
kink, the healthier and more adjusted he becomes.
Though the film’s themes are serious,
there is also much deadpan humour, with a
lightness of touch typified by a sequence in
which Juha’s date Satu (Oona Airola) laughs her
way through an awkward sexual encounter.
This sex-positive story of a drowning man’s
re-emergence into life is miraculously both
bleak and funny – though the viewer might
feel less passive if there were as much focus
on what drives Mona’s S as Juha’s M.Dogs Don’t Wear Pants
Finland/Latvia 2019
Director: J-P Valkeapää
Certificate 18 104m 54sFinland, the recent past. Swimming in a lake,
Juha’s wife drowns; Juha himself almost drowns
trying to rescue her. Some years later, Juha, still
heartbroken, takes teenage daughter Elli to have her
tongue pierced. Wandering into the BDSM dungeon
downstairs, he is attacked by dominatrix Mona; as
he is choked, he has a vision of being underwater.
He hires Mona’s services, and the sessions always
end, at his request, with suffocation, which he feelsbrings him closer to his wife. He is hospitalised after
concealing from Mona his loss of consciousness.
Banned from sessions, he goes on a date with Elli’s
music teacher Satu, but she kicks him out after
he asks her to strangle him. Juha stalks Mona to a
club and later follows her home, where she insists
on removing one of his teeth but refuses to help
him die. Dressed in bondage gear, Juha goes to
the club. Dancing alone, he encounters Mona.Producers
Aleksi Bardy
Helen Vinogradov
Written by
J-P Valkeapää
Juhana Lumme
Original Story
Juhana Lumme
Director of
Photography
Pietari Peltola
Editor
Mervi JunkkonenSet Designer
Kaisa Mäkinen
Music/Piano/
Sampler/Electronics
Michal Nejtek
Sound Design
Micke Nyström
Costume Designer
Sari Suominen
Stunt Co-ordinators
Roman Neso
Laupmaa
Reijo KontioArtem Grigoryev
©Helsinki-filmi Oy
Production
Companies
Helsinki-Filmi
presents in
association with
Tasse Film a J-P
Valkeapää film
A Tasse Film, Suomen
Elokuvasäätiö, Yle,
SF Studios, NationalFilm Centre of Latvia,
Riga Film Fund
co-production
Executive Producers
Annika Sucksdorff
Dome Karukoski
Tia Ståhlberg
Andrea ReuterCast
Pekka Strang
JuhaKrista Kosonen
Mona
Ilona Huhta
Elli
Jani Volanen
Pauli, Juha’s colleague
Oona Airola
Satu
Ester Geislerovà
wife
Dolby Digital
In Colour[2.35:1]
Subtitles
Distributor
Anti-Worlds Releasing
Finnish theatrical title
Koirat eivät
käytä housujaBreath wish: Krista KosonenCredits and SynopsisDolittle
USA/People’s Republic of China/Japan 2020
Director: Stephen Gaghan
Certificate PG 101m 24sVictorian England. Dr Dolittle lives as a hermit,
tending to his animals and mourning his wife
Lily. Summoned by an ailing Queen Victoria, he
determines that she is suffering from nightshade
poisoning. He sets sail with his animals in
search of the antidote. Palace physician Dr
Müdfly tries to thwart the expedition. Dolittle
travels to Lily’s former home to find her journal
and discover directions to the island where the
antidote grows. He returns to heal the queen.Produced by
Joe Roth
Jeff Kirschenbaum
Susan Downey
Screenplay
Stephen Gaghan
Dan Gregor
Doug Mand
Screen Story
Thomas Shepherd
Director of
Photography
Guillermo Navarro
Edited by
Craig Alpert
Chris Lebenzon
Production
Designer
Dominic Watkins
Music
Danny Elfman
Costume Designer
Jenny Beavan
©Universal Studios
and Perfect Universe
Investment Inc.
Production
Companies
Universal Pictures
presents in
association withPerfect World
Pictures a Roth/
Kirschenbaum
Films/Team Downey
production
A film by Stephen
Gaghan
Presented in
association with
Dentsu Inc.
Executive
Producers
Robert Downey Jr
Sarah Bradshaw
Zachary Roth
Jonathan LiebesmanCast
Robert Downey Jr
Dr John Dolittle
Antonio Banderas
King Rassouli
Michael Sheen
Dr Blair Müdfly
Harry Collett
Tommy Stubbins
Emma Thompson
voice of Polynesia
Rami Malek
voice of Chee-Chee
John Cenavoice of Yoshi
Kumail Nanjiani
voice of Plimpton
Octavia Spencer
voice of Dab-Dab
Tom Holland
voice of Jip
Craig Robinson
voice of Fleming
Ralph Fiennes
voice of Barry
Selena Gomez
voice of Betsy
Marion Cotillard
voice of Tutu
Jim Broadbent
Lord Thomas
Badgley
Jessie Buckley
Queen VictoriaDolby Digital/
Dolby Atmos
In Colour
[1.85:1]
Distributor
Universal Pictures
International
UK & EireCredits and SynopsisReviewed by Anna Smith
“I bought a front-row seat to crazy town,” says
CGI squirrel Kevin during a scene in Dolittle, and
his words might resonate with audiences in
more ways than intended. This foray into family
territory from Syriana’s Stephen Gaghan has
none of the charm of the 1967 musical with Rex
Harrison, and many perplexing choices. One
of these is star Robert Downey Jr’s insistence
on a Welsh accent; another is a plot that fails to
balance palace conspiracies with animal antics.
There’s brief intrigue in Dolittle’s ability
to understand sick animals, but this talent is
reduced to a plot device as he seeks information
from creatures on a mission. These range from
an octopus in Queen Victoria’s chambers to a
dragon guarding an antidote to the poison the
monarch has ingested. Unusually for a Downey
Jr character, Dolittle is not amusing enough to
compensate for his sense of self-importance, and
he undertakes the voyage only for fear of eviction
from his mansion after the queen’s death. The
queen is a distant figure lying in bed; Dolittle’s
young apprentice, Stubbins, is a thinly drawn
everyboy, while the freakishly pretty Lady Rose is
merely Stubbins’s clearly signalled love interest.
CG work is strong, though only one or
two of the voice actors are well cast: Ralph
Fiennes’s bitter alpha-tiger is rippling with
imperious resentment, but Rami Malek’s
insecure gorilla fails to amuse. Like many
an ailing comedy, Dolittle ends up falling
back on fart jokes to make the kids laugh. But
they will probably be laughing alone.