Dhogs (2017)

Directed by: Andrés Goteira | 85 minutes | comedy, crime | Actors: Carlos Blanco, Alejandro Carro, María Costas, Melania Cruz, Miguel de Lira, Antonio Durán ‘Morris’, Roi Gantas, Enrique Lojo, Xosé López, Iván Marcos, Milo Taboada

You often see them pass by, such statements as ‘there are two kinds of people; people who… and people who…’. It is often meant to be funny, but filmmaker Andres Goteira approaches the principle in a deadly serious, black and white way. He begins his film debut ‘Dhogs’ with the statement that there are dogs and hogs existence, submissive, servile dogs and filthy, underhanded animals. However, his characters are less black and white than you might initially think. And the viewer is held up to a kind of mirror.

‘Dhogs’ can be roughly divided into three parts. In the first part we meet a businessman who, after his business is done, takes refuge in the bar of the hotel where he spends the night. He was brought to this hotel by a jaded-looking taxi driver – who later in the film shows up in a scene that raises more questions than answers. The well-mannered family man (in the taxi he had a telephone conversation with his wife about the sport his son should be doing) is wooed in the bar by a young woman, in what is the most ravishing scene in the film. Somewhat reluctantly, the man accepts her advances and the two end up in his hotel room. After breaking the fourth wall – we see that the hotel room is part of a theater production, and that the audience has witnessed what happened here – we follow the woman in what becomes the second part of the film.

After leaving the hotel, Alex (Melania Cruz) is chased through the nighttime streets of the anonymous city by a dangerous madman, who has no intention of happy things with her. The act itself remains out of the picture, but when the day comes again, we witness the violent man’s road trip. He visits a remote gas station, somewhere in a Spanish desert landscape, where he also doesn’t make friends with the two owners – mother and son, who could have walked straight out of a “Twin Peaks” episode.

The fate of Alex and her attacker is once again in the hands of someone else – but here Goteira mainly plays with the viewer’s expectations. This trick is repeated in the third part, when a little boy scrolls through a menu of a game. It’s like an old-fashioned book: choose option a, then flip to page 25 and the prince slays the dragon. Choose your option b, scroll to page 36 and the dragon will destroy the village.

Yet the director is firmly in control and knows how to manipulate the viewer through his changing perspectives. Just as Alex claims in the bar scene that she likes to make people feel uncomfortable, Goteira manages to do just that by showing alienating events that seem to have no other purpose than to confuse the viewer. But even in the linear story there are elements that are not easy for the average audience to grasp.

‘Dhogs’ is without a doubt an interesting film, which is dangerously close to the pretentious. A film that – if it grabs you the first time – you would like to see again immediately, to have the feeling that you now understand the rules of the game better.