‘Dog On Trial’: Cannes Review

Dir. Laetitia Dosch. France/Switzerland. 2024. 80mins.

With French-language courtroom dramas much in vogue lately (Anatomy of a Fall, Saint Omer, The Goldman Case), there is every chance that Dog On Trial will get a fair hearing. But the directing debut by Laetitia Dosch, in which she stars as an animal defense lawyer taking on the case of an aggressive dog, is very much the unruly mutt in this pack.

  Too eager to be petted.

A hit-and-miss comedy with some brisk humour, and some seriously philosophical intent behind its sometimes knockabout surface, the film may well resonate with upmarket French audiences following its debut in Un Certain Regard. The arthouse prestige of director/star Dosch – who received a major career boost as the lead in Leonor Serraille’s 2017 Cannes hit Jeune Femme – should be a pull, alongside a class canine act from four-legged co-star Kodi. Outside France, however, the humour may come across as too wordy on one level, and on another, altogether too manic and too eager to be petted.

In Jeune Femme, Dosch – also seen in last year’s eco-dystopia thriller Acid – patented a manic performance style that she pushes to an extreme here. She plays Avril Lucciani, an idealistic Swiss lawyer known as a consistently unsuccessful defender of hopeless causes. She is approached by a cantankerous social outsider, Dariuch Michovski (popular Belgian stalwart François Damiens) to save his dog Cosmos, accused of biting three women; one, Portuguese cleaner Lorene (Anabela Moreira), has incurred serious facial scarring. Not only will Dariuch face legal action, but Cosmos is likely to be put down. Accepting the case, Avril is inspired to argue that a dog is an autonomous entity that should tried in its own right – making the trial of Cosmos the first legal proceeding against an animal since the Middle Ages.

With Avril narrating the action in a knowing voice-over that runs intermittently and rather obtrusively throughout, much of the film consists of a series of goofy riffs on the idea of a dog’s legal status – including a session in which a panel of clerics, academics and philosophers debate animal ethics and the canine soul, as well as a larky scene involving a device designed to make a dog ‘speak’. As the case becomes a cause célèbre, setting even sleepy Switzerland aflame, Avril finds herself getting closer to Cosmos, and to friendly dog handler Marc (Jean-Pascal Zadi).

Dosch directs with undeniable confidence, if not brashness, with assorted flourishes such as an interpolated montage of newsreel and animation illustrating the physical reason why, supposedly, dogs don’t respect women. A thematic seriousness runs throughout, sometimes heavy-handedly, as Avril tells the court why the Cosmos case has repercussions for gender, race and other social issues.

What Dosch lacks, as co-writer with Anne-Sophie Bailly, is a sense of clarity and relevance. Even at a succinct 80 minutes, the film feels overstuffed with digressions and sidebar material – such as Avril’s early discussion with a sexually preoccupied colleague (Pierre Deladonchamps) and her repartee-laden relationship with beleaguered 12-year-old neighbour Joachim (endearingly impudent newcomer Tom Fiszelson).

DoP Alexis Kavyrchine gets good mileage out of the imposing Swiss courtrooms, and makes this a visually lively and handsome production. But the absolute trump card is the irresistible turn by Kodi as Cosmos. This is not one of those doggy performances that is all in the editing: not only does this superbly trained mutt have a large repertoire of expressive looks, he also jumps, howls along with French chansons and flops obligingly in court. Surely the most expressive canine thespian seen in Cannes since The Artist’s internationally acclaimed Uggie, Kodi is a regular Chien Gabin.

Also giving good value in the two-legged league are Canadian actor Anne Dorval as Avril’s formidable media-savvy court opponent and Mathieu Demy as a sleepily bemused judge. As for both Dosch and Damiens, pushing their frenetic register to the max, they very much contribute to Dog On Trial often being doggone trying.