Love them or hate them, you cannot ignore them. Let this weekend be about dogs—of all kinds. These recommendations are some of the unmissable entertainment content currently available on OTT platforms. From fantasy to dystopia—personal and universal—these strong films and shows rip open ideas about love, identity, and more. Tender and visceral, these directors' delight in filmmaking are your companion this weekend. Like a bouncy, boisterous dog that cannot sit still.
'D' For Ducournau...Titane (2021)
"Love Is a Dog From Hell" is tattooed between the breasts of Alexia, a dancer. What would love make her do? And what would love for her make others do? French director Julia Ducournau's second film, Titane, explores love in all its strangeness, violence, and vulnerability.
Poster of Titane
Publicity material for Titane
The winner of Palme d'Or at Cannes 2021, Titane is a film that is likely to make you cringe at scenes of violence. But it will also make you cry with its nuance-hunting of tenderness at unexpected nooks and crannies.
Alexia, later Adrian, met with an accident as a child and ended up with a titanium plate in her head. Is this what has made her into a 'lover' of cars? Does it have anything to do with her half-explained killing spree? The film makes no attempt to answer these questions. What it does instead is to understand the limits of that thing called love. In Ducarnau's universe there aren't any.
Alexias is impregnated by a car. Yes, you read it right. She is later accepted by a fireman, Vincent, as his missing son. Yes, this, too, is correct.
Once you get past the outrageousness of the plot, you are offered a worldview where love conquers all: gender, material dimensions, criminality, everything. The relationship between Alexia and Vincent is a case study for a handbook on love. The vocabulary wherein, however, is not regular in any way. The bodies are not beautiful, the words spoken are rarely tender. Yet, love here is made of titanium: strong and life-saving.
Where to Watch: Mubi
The Dog Who Wouldn't be Quiet (2021)
The Dog Who Wouldn't be Quiet, an Argentinian film, is the story of a man called Sebastián, or Seba, a laid-back graphic designer in his 30s. And he has an eight-year-old dog that is never heard barking. Yet, it seems to be driving his neighbours crazy and they complaint to him about her howling. He has to quit his job because he cannot take her along to work.
The Dog Who Wouldn't be Quiet
Publicity material for The Dog Who Wouldn't be Quiet
The film moves in hiccups but takes the viewer along and that is what makes it beautiful. We are a part of Seba's life as he goes around finding livelihood, love, and life. Seba's life is turbulent but it pales in comparison with the catastrophe that the world faces.
The Dog Who Wouldn't be Quiet is like a book on screen that you want to read at once and then spend the rest of the day mulling over it. Director Ana Katz's storytelling is whimsically put together that disregards the compulsions of continuity. Integrating elements of verisimilitude and sci fi, the film inhabits two worlds of universality and individualism: Seba's life and struggles are unique yet he inhabits a world that must deal with a common catastrophe.
A bit like our own struggles during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, right?
Where to Watch: Mubi
Dogs of Berlin (2018)
Germany's top soccer player, Orkan Erdem, is murdered on the eve of the qualifying match for the soccer world cup where Germany is playing against Turkey. This explosive opening sets the ball rolling for this stylishly filmed and framed show. The world of sports, betting, the police, Arab and Turkish diaspora, and the underbelly of the German neo-Nazi movement collide with each other in German drama Dogs of Berlin.
German drama Dogs of Berlin
Courtesy: Netflix
Who has killed Erdem? Two cops set out to solve the mystery: one a purebred German with Nazi connections in his family, and the other of a Turkish-German ethnicity. Is it the neo-Nazis? Is it the Arab Mafia? Is it the angry Turkish nationalists that would have preferred him playing for Turkey, or is it the Berlin mafia that controls the big chunk of the sports betting pie?
Dogs of Berlin is an unromanticised view of cosmopolitanism where everything gets complicated with endless moving parts. The show explores identity politics in a multicultural society with a sharpened knife and its gory details are available for the viewers to observe. The investigating cops, the members of the mafia, their families are all entwined in a web of crime where nobody looks flattering.
In the eighth episode of the show, Erdem's funeral takes place which is attended by the competing clans of Berlin's underworld as well as the cops. And that becomes a metaphor for the world that the show depicts: divided by interests, joined by death.
This pacy drama keeps the tension right through the last episode and resists the urge to be sententious about diversity et al.
Where to Watch: Netflix
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