Dog Days

Aroview: A wilfully transgressive Euro-drama examining middle-class dysfunction and despair in a Viennese suburb over a few days in a summer heat wave.

Using a cast of mostly non-professionals to semi-improvise the dialogue and perform some fairly bold, unflattering acts before the camera, this maintains a time-bomb tension throughout, but stays on the right side of bad-boy, irresponsible film-making with some shrewd black humour and an overall integrity. Still, with its on-screen orgies and fascination with other base human behaviour, the threshold it observes is a matter of taste, and is not, as they say, for the prudish.

NZ International Film Festival 2002

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