Dogman **** (2018, Marcello Fonte, Edoardo Pesce, Nunzia Schiano, Adamo Dionisi) – Movie Review

Co-writer/ director Matteo Garrone’s 2018 Italian neo-realist relationships drama, crime movie and revenge thriller Dogman has a simmering and then scalding impact. It comes from the director of the 2008 Gomorrah.

Dogman is one heck of a strong, hard and powerful movie, unexpectedly changing from social realism into a horror film. If this film were a dog, it would be a mongrel. It really is a mixed breed. It wouldn’t be a cuddly mutt either, it would be a big, dark, dangerous dog that you would still be very fond of and want to care for and protect.

Marcello Fonte, who plays the little Italian dogman guy Marcello, the local shop-owning dog groomer (his shop is called Dogman), is really impressive, recalling Roberto Benigni in Life Is Beautiful. Marcello Fonte won the Best Actor award at Cannes Film Festival in 2018. Edoardo Pesce, who plays his nemesis, is also impressive, but in a scary way. They are kind of yin and yang, the beauty and the beast.

The film begins in quasi-documentary style with Marcello grooming a dog in his shop. Marcello loves his dogs and his daughter, but adds to his poor living by acts of small criminality, selling drugs, and gets involved in a dangerous subservient, submissive relationship with violent former boxer Simone (Edoardo Pesce), who is terrorising the locals in the depressed south-western Italian coastal town neighbourhood.

Simone forces Marcello into a jewel heist on the next-door pawn shop, but things go wrong and Marcello is arrested. Feeling betrayed after going to jail for a year on behalf of Simone, who cheats and disrespects him, the worm finally turns and Marcello finally strikes back an unexpected act of vengeance. This is a film about a dog and his master, though Marcello is the dog, and, small, gentle and harmless though he seems, he bites back. Horrific though this is, that is a feel-good moment.

Garrone explores his townscape and characters with a beady, if bleary-eyed gaze. It is all really impressive. Dogman is filmed at Castel Volturno, Caserta, Campania, Italy, should you ever feel like checking it out. The Dogman shop is on Via Darsena Orientale, Villaggio Coppola, Castel Volturno. Castel Volturno is located on Italy’s west coast about 35 kilometres northwest of Naples. Dogman makes it seem like a place to avoid. Tourists will want to do a U turn round it. Garrone allows us the luxury of a virtual tour.

It was released on 19 October 2018 in the UK.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Movie Review

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