Dog Days

Weekend. It is oppressively hot, south of Vienna, in no man's land between highway feeder roads, supermarkets and detached houses. The temperature rises, the aggression increases. Asphalt surfaces crack open. This merciless midsummer period at the end of July and deep into August is known as the "dog days". In this heated atmosphere, six loosely connected but masterfully assembled stories tell of everyday life and aggression for two days and two nights; of nights full of games, sex and violence and of days full of loneliness and longing for love. Ulrich Seidl, who made several award-winning documentaries before his first feature film, also adopts a documentary-like, dissecting approach here, the authenticity of which is reinforced by the use of amateur actors. The result is a theater of cruelty critical of civilization, for which Seidl won the Grand Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival before his film was named the most successful cinema film of the year in Austria. And this despite the fact that "Dog Days" is a film full of impositions. At the same time, however, it is a revealing experimental set-up about man as man's greatest enemy - a merciless look behind the pretty facades of a seemingly ideal suburban world. "Seidl is unsparing in his staged observations of everyday life in the bourgeoisie, in terms of the ugliness of the surroundings and the people, the bleakness of the living environment or the coarseness of the language - which is subtitled because Viennese banter of this magnitude is hardly understood on this side of the Alps. Seidl's concern is not generally socially critical, however, but specifically human. He shows the failure of love, the loss of respect for each other and for oneself, the unrestrained acting out of base instincts, the loss of emotional stability. Seidl's diagnoses are devastating, which is why he sometimes deliberately pushes the boundaries of what is reasonable. [...] Seidl is convinced that there is naked horror under the roofs of his fellow citizens. He shows it more clearly than anyone else, but he doesn't accuse anyone or expose a character. On the contrary, he clearly shows his affection or at least his understanding for them, shows their loneliness, their failure. Seidl simply shows what there is and can be, and that is undoubtedly the greatest horror." (Oliver Rahayel, at: filmdienst.de) "Seidl's world is a perfectly styled, intense and gripping nightmare. And yet you can feel in every minute of his film that Seidl loves his characters more than he hates them, even if it is often difficult for the viewer to do so." (Nana A.T.Rebhan, on arte.tv)